about

Currently based in the United States’ Blue Ridge Mountains, she carries her camera, and her passion for dance, percussion, Mother Nature, art and food with her wherever she goes. She has created and collaborated in developing photographic projects, interventions, performances, and installations that illuminate alternative possibilities to the limitations placed on so many of us based on socio-economic class, race, ethnicity, nationality, immigration status and gender & sexual identity.

  Her commercial photography work has been primarily focused on products ranging from jewelry to the culinary arts; music, dance and performance art, as well as portraiture of various kinds. Rayya is a native speaker of Arabic, English and also speaks French. She studied sociology at Loyola University New Orleans before receiving a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. She then received an Association Montessori International (AMI) teaching certification from the MIP in Prague, Czech Republic.