Aistė Rye (b. 1992, Lithuania) is a Lithuanian-American, Queer, Deaf/Hard of Hearing visual artist, muralist, and illustrator. She was born in Klaipėda and spent her childhood in Lithuania, immigrating to Chicago in 2000. Rye holds an M.A. in Emerging Media Design and Development and a B.A. in Journalism from Ball State University. Rye’s journey as a professional artist began after a studio art class field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago. She pivoted her career focus to the arts in 2021 when she became a Marketing Coordinator at Stonington Gallery, Seattle’s oldest gallery exhibiting Pacific Northwest Coast Native Art while taking fine art classes at Seattle Central College.

As a Deaf and Queer woman raised in post-Soviet Lithuania and coming of age in America, Rye engages with the world from a position that transcends multiple cultural binaries. Rye’s artwork is informed by her experiences navigating an able-bodied, xenophobic, and patriarchal society, and seeks to challenge assumptions about culture, gender, feminism, and the Deaf experience. Through Rye’s educational experiences with American Sign Language, she became deeply connected to the Deaf community, inspiring her latest body of work expressing her Deaf experience. Her work is representational, employing vibrant colors with sharp contrasts of light and shadow. Rye's dreamlike paintings intend to take the audience on spiritual journeys into the surreal, inviting viewers to return to the ultimate path: the journey into ourselves.

Rye has exhibited artwork at Slip Gallery in Downtown Seattle, Basecamp Studios in Seattle, the Belltown Art Walk in Seattle, and the Anderson Center in Kenosha, Wisconsin. She most recently curated DEAFhood: Reflections on identity and Deaf culture at Slip Gallery in November 2022. This group exhibition of 11 Deaf and Hard of Hearing artists expressed the Deaf experience from a cultural, linguistic, and intersectional point of view (also known as Deaf View/Image Art or De’VIA) via paintings, graphics, photography, mixed media, and GIFs.

Rye’s latest public art clients in 2023 include an elementary school in Lynwood, WA; Northwest School for the Deaf & Hard of Hearing in Shoreline, WA; and the 63rd St. Mural for the Phinney Neighborhood Association in Seattle.

Rye currently lives in Seattle and works from her art studio in Belltown. Contact her for general inquiries, mural design, illustration, fine art commissions, artwork sales, and more.