Sonya Clark

Sonya Clark is an artist and educator who creates installations and objects rooted in craft’s legacy. She employs the language of textiles and politics of hair to celebrate Blackness, reclaim freedoms, and interrogate historical and contemporary injustices. The work is grounded in the exchange of stories and the transmission of craft techniques between individuals, communities, and generations.

“Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other,” currently on view at Cranbrook Art Museum through September 26, is a traveling mid-career survey focusing on Clark’s community-centered and participatory projects created over the past 25 years. Among them are the Hair Craft Project (a collaboration with 12 hairstylists), The Healing Memorial (created with thousands from the Detroit community as a salve for pandemic grief), Monumental Cloth: the flag we should know ( a series of interactive works that bring to light the little-known cloth that ended the Civil War), and Finding Freedom (a 1500 square foot canopy created in part by incarcerated individuals). Her work has been exhibited in over 500 venues worldwide. ​“Sonya Clark: We Are Each Other” marks her 60^th solo exhibit.

Clark is the Winifred Arms Professor of Arts and Humanities at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Previously, she held the title of Commonwealth Professor and was a Distinguished Research Fellow in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has received awards from many organizations, including United States Artists, Pollock-Krasner, Art Prize, and Anonymous Was a Woman.

Sonya’s ​“We Are Each Other” panel discussion and reception will take place on Saturday, September 23 at Cranbrook Art Museum from 2:30 – 5 pm and will include a conversation with Renée Ater and Joey Quiñones with a poetry reading by Nandi Comer. The exhibition closes on Sunday, September 24. 

Presented in partnership with the Cranbrook Art Museum and the University of Michigan Museum of Art, with support from the Arts & Resistance LSA Theme Semester. This project was made possible by a grant from the Arts Initiative at the University of Michigan.

Series presenting partners: Detroit Public Television and PBS Books. Media partner: Michigan Radio.