Sydney Vernon

Artist Sydney Vernon 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. Vernon earned her BFA at The Cooper Union, New York. Recent exhibitions include 125 Newbury, New York; Luce Gallery, Turin; Deli Gallery, New York, and Sargent’s Daughter’s, Los Angeles. She lives and works in Baltimore, MD.

Tyhe Cooper is a writer working in experimental prose, poetry, and digitality. They are the Production Editor and a poetry events curator at the Brooklyn Rail.

Chloe Stagaman is a Brooklyn-based curator. She is Director of Programs at the Brooklyn Rail, where she works on the journal’s weekday conversation series The New Social Environment.