Roya joined PICA in 2012, first as Community Engagement Manager, then as Director of Public Engagement, and now as Artistic Director & Curator of Public Engagement. She has grown PICA’s public programming into a robust curatorial platform for education, access, participation, contextualization and critical inquiry through an expanded Time-Based Art Festival Institute (including a Guest Scholars and Writers arm), Field Guide to Dance audience engagement program, summer symposia series, socially engaged and participatory performance projects, and other initiatives that emphasize artist-audience connections and promote dialogue and exchange around contemporary art, culture, and politics. She has developed cross-cultural partnerships with local nonprofits, public schools, colleges and universities, and youth groups to broaden access to PICA’s programs and diversify the organization’s audienceship, leadership, civic role, community reach, and support for local artists, with particular attention to racial equity. She is co-director of PICA’s Precipice Fund, part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ Regional Regranting Program, which makes grants to unincorporated, collaborative, visual art projects, programs, and spaces in the greater areas of Portland, Astoria, and Eugene, Oregon. With other program staff, she is integral to sustaining PICA’s innovative Creative Exchange Lab artist residency program.
Roya is a founding member of Arts Workers for Equity (AWE), which advocates for racial equity in Portland’s arts and culture sector through research, campaigns, and public programs. She has delivered papers and presentations and served as a lecturer and panelist at national conferences and convenings, including Common Field; Dance/USA; National Performance Network/Visual Art Network; Alliance of Artist Communities; Society of Dance History Scholars/Congress on Research in Dance; and UCLA’s Thinking Gender. She has served on numerous grant and award selection panels, including MAP Fund; National Performance Network; ArtPlace America; Brink Award (Pacific NW); The New Foundation (Seattle); Kindling Fund (Portland, ME); Grit Fund (Baltimore); Platforms Fund (New Orleans); Performance Works NW (Portland, OR); and Oregon Arts Commission. Locally, she served on Metro’s inaugural Community Placemaking Grants Advisory Council and the Jade & Midway Districts’ Art Plan Steering Committee. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Art & Social Practice MFA Program at Portland State University, named one of the top 15 art schools nationally, she she has taught courses in Critical Art Theory, Contemporary Art History, Art & Politics, and Directed Studies.
Prior to PICA, Roya worked in galleries and produced freelance curatorial projects in San Francisco and Greater LA as well as Phoenix, where she was also a grant writer and education program manager for a women’s foundation. She earned a B.A. in Contemporary Visual Culture & Gender Studies from the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies in California, and a Master’s in Arts Management from the University of Oregon, concentrating in Community Arts with a thesis on planning for public participation and community engagement in contemporary feminist art programs.