Sonja John is
a queer, first generation, Bronx-based artist, educator, and curator. John's interdisciplinary practice explores cultural, botanical, and material hybridity through paintings, textiles, printmaking, and site-responsive installations that reference plant forms and vernacular architecture across equatorial zones. These motifs investigate diasporic longing and nostalgic fictions of the Caribbean built from history, memory, and family lore.
She received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design in 2017. Her contributions to museum education have been featured at the RISD Museum and Hyperallergic. John has performed at Jazz At Lincoln Center and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Her visual art has been featured on I Like Your Work Podcast, n+1 magazine, Seeing Color Podcast with Zhiwan Cheung and Them. John was awarded the ChaNorth Artist Residency Young Artist Fellowship Award in 2022, and received the General Fellowship residency award for The Studios at MASS MoCA in 2023.
An avid collector of animal bones, she is probably best friends with the skeletons in your closet.
contact
email: sonjaljohn@gmail.com
instagram: @sonja__jay / @sonjajohncuratorial