Kat Ryals (b. 1988 in Jonesboro, AR) is a Brooklyn-based artist, curator, and photographer. Ryals received a BFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA & Adv. Certificate in Museum Education from Brooklyn College. She has shown her work nationally, including in a solo booth at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in 2020 and 2022, a collaborative two person show at Elijah Wheat Showroom in 2023, a two person show at Ortega Y Gasset Projects in 2022, and in recent group exhibitions with ChaShaMa, Ortega Y Gasset Projects, and The Wassaic Project. Ryals has also completed several artist residencies, including the Wassaic Project (2017, 2019, 2022), ChaNorth (2019), the Peter Bullough Foundation (2021), and a Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center (2018). She will be an Artist-in-Residence at the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan in 2024. Ryals is also the Co-founder of the online arts platform, PARADICE PALASE, based out of Brooklyn and was recently the Curator of Art for famed nightlife and culture venues House of X at PUBLIC and House of Yes.

Ryals' practice is often influenced by her upbringing in Arkansas and the Acadiana region of Louisiana, where her days were spent rummaging through thrift and junk stores, daydreaming in ornate Catholic churches, and roaming unspoiled forests and swamps.

Her work examines how myth-making, ornamentation, and special effects serve as tools for manipulation. Utilizing the dichotomies of natural/artificial, trash/treasure, sacred/profane, and luxury/kitsch, she emulates material culture artifacts to bring direct attention to the core components of manufactured value. By creating mixed media sculptures, lens-based work, wearable art, and installations, Ryals seeks to understand how the cultural currencies of authenticity, taste, and illusion are used to generate an economy of power and hierarchy within our world.

 Her recent dye sublimation rug prints on velvet blend the aesthetics of modern casino carpets with 18th century Savonnerie rugs - textiles favored by French aristocracy. They have the appearance of handwoven opulence yet were produced through a simple craft-based collage process, then photographed and printed through a consumer level printing company. The combined colors, textures, and designs are enchanting, yet the elements that constitute them are discarded, cheap, artificial, or dead.