Sonya Clark

There is a dichotomy at the heart of the work of textile and social practice artist, Sonya Clark. The simplicity of her everyday materials such as hair, textiles and language is at odds with her urgent exploration of the legacy of craft, history and race. Drawing on the complexity of her Afro-Caribbean family with a Jamaican mother, Trinidadian father and a Scottish great-grandfather, she has a unique vantage on the notion of American identity: forged through slavery, immigration, love and an intergenerational linking of cultures.

Her practice is deliberate in its translation of what she calls the DNA of objects. Hair, thread, and combs become bearers of identity, each carrying inherited knowledge across time. In 2014, this interest led Clark to re-hair violin bows with human hair and collaborate with musicians to use these bows in a performance of James Weldon Johnson’s Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing and Francis Scott Key’s Star-Spangled Banner.

Clark is a Professor of Art and the History of Art at Amherst College. She earned an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also holds a BA from Amherst College where she received an honorary doctorate in 2015. She is the recipient of the 2026 Guggenheim fellowship for Fine Arts, the Rappaport Prize, a United States Artist Fellowship, a Pollock Krasner award, an 1858 Prize, and an Anonymous Was a Woman Award.