Sydney Vernon

Sydney Vernon (b. 1995, Prince George’s County, MD) superimposes personal family photographs and folklore with both real and imagined histories, quietly critiquing the global depiction of Black life and bodies. Combining elements of painting, drawing, and collage, Vernon’s multilayered works blend memory and history into new forms, at once imagining a poetic contextualization and a demand for recontextualization, coalescing symbols and ornaments with the spirit of her figures. She received her BFA from the Cooper Union (New York, NY) in 2021 and is currently teaching design at  Bowie State University. Most recently she has exhibited work with the Phillips Collection (Washington D.C) Kapp Kapp Gallery (New York, New York) and 125 Newbury (New York, NY).