raya marie hazell (she/they, b. 1998, Atlanta, GA, USA) works at the boundaries between collage, installation, and ritual performance. In her work, hazell focuses on concepts of death and deletion to explore contradictions in how we conceive notions of control and privacy. Embracing collage as a method, she constructs sculptural installations of 'home' using found objects, her own furniture, and collaged family archives. In these layered diaristic investigations, she contrasts the ephemerality of bodies, precarious permanence of archives, and interminability of digital data. The result transforms images and letters from her own archives into inviting reflections on home, motherhood, surveillance and grief.

Central to raya's practice is a belief in the transformative power of collective mourning. In a time of compounding crises, she offers grief as a political framework for understanding the roots of violence and seeding new worlds. In her ritual practice, she facilitates grief rituals as playful, somatic containers for alchemizing loss and choreographing alternative relations. As the daughter of multiple diasporas, she feels compelled to investigate how making new ritual can allow for a re-connection to place and collectivity within diasporic communities.