SONYA DYER


is an artist and writer from London. A Somerset House Studios Resident, she was a finalist for the Arts Foundation Futures Award 2021, and a UK Associate Artist at the Delfina Foundation in 2020. She is an alum of Whitney Museum of American Art: Independent Study Program and obtained a PhD from Middlesex University in 2021.

Dyer’s practice reimagines where the centre is located in fictional narratives of the future. She explores how subjectivities and alliances are formed across cultures and temporalities, creating radical futures through unexpected connections.

Recent projects include Whitstable Biennale (2022), The London Open, Whitechapel Gallery (2022), Directions: Forward, Karst Gallery, Plymouth (2022), Temporary Compositions, Gallery 31, London (2021), Art Night London (2021), 13 Ways of Looking, Herbert Gallery and Museums, Coventry (2020), Rewriting The Future, Site Gallery, Sheffield (2019), Another World is Possible, CAMP, Copenhagen (2018), Familiar Strangers, The Luminary, St. Louis (2018), Or, Dark Fecundity, The Centre for Afrofuturist Studies, Iowa (2018) and The Claudia Jones Space Station, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and The NewBridge Project, Newcastle (2017).

As a writer and commentator on art and culture, Dyer has contributed to numerous publications including Frieze, Arts UK, Contemporary & and a-n online in addition to her academic writing.

Hailing Frequencies Open (HFO), her current body of work, intersects the Greek myth of Andromeda, the dubious legacy of HeLa cells and actor Nichelle Nicols’ pioneering work in diversifying the NASA astronaut pool in the 1970s as the starting point for an exploration of Black female subjectivities within narratives of the future. HFO combines social justice with speculation, fantasy with the political.

She is on the Advisory Board of Room to Bloom

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This website and its content is ©opyright of Sonya Dyer, unless stated otherwise. Last updated March 2023. All rights reserved.
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