The Huest Eye, 2023-2024
Embroidered thread on Rives BFK paper
36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm)
Edition of 12
Published by Goya Contemporary / Goya-Girl Press
"Sonya Clark’s two editions, The Huest Eye and The Bluest, Twisted, center on Toni Morrison’s groundbreaking 1970 novel The Bluest Eye, a work the artist has read more than thirty times. Through embroidery and lithography, Clark creates a powerful visual dialogue that confronts and redresses American constructions of beauty, centers Blackness, and exposes the enduring effects of internalized racism.
One of the most influential writers and intellectuals of the twentieth century, Morrison challenged Western beauty standards that privileged Whiteness while marginalizing Blackness. Set in Lorain, Ohio, during the 1940s, The Bluest Eye follows Pecola Breedlove, a young Black girl navigating racism, violence, and social rejection while longing for acceptance and beauty.
Morrison’s symbolic use of color is central to Clark’s interpretation. In The Huest Eye, Clark translates the 473 colors referenced throughout Morrison’s text into embroidered blocks of thread that function as visual equivalents of the written language. As Clark explains, “In The Huest Eye, the colors follow the order in which they appear in the writing. The length of each color block corresponds to the length of the word. Red is a short block, whereas purple is longer.” She also notes that passages referencing the Dick and Jane stories are rendered through compressed green and white sections, reflecting the novel’s increasingly fragmented typography and psychological tension.
“The colors are embroidered on paper to highlight the relationship between text, textile, and the fiber we grow—hair. It is also significant that Toni Morrison died the year the CROWN Act was passed, in 2019,” Clark states.
Clark conceived The Huest Eye in direct relationship to The Bluest, Twisted, describing the latter as “a solid mass.” In this work, Morrison’s novel is transliterated into “Twist,” an alphabet font Clark developed using the curl patterns of her own hair. Layered together, the text accumulates into a dense black form. Clark explains, “If you mixed all those referent colors together, one would arrive at black.” Once framed and glazed, the work becomes reflective, incorporating the viewer into its surface. “It is important the viewer sees themselves in this work,” Clark explains. “My font, made to reference African hair, resists the European dominance of the Roman alphabet’s widespread use. Twist re-centers Africa as the cradle of humanity. It returns us to our roots.”
Published by Goya Contemporary/Goya-Girl Press in collaboration with master printmaker Judith Solodkin of Solo Impression, NY, the editions translate Morrison’s themes into meticulously crafted embroidered and printed forms that examine how systems of discrimination are reinforced through language, representation, and cultural convention.
Morrison’s work fundamentally reshaped American literature and cultural discourse, and Clark’s practice likewise reflects a deep intentionality in confronting inherited systems of exclusion while affirming Black identity, history, and resilience. Their cultural impact is profound. Clark has often credited her ancestors as central influences on her worldview and speaks of Morrison as a heroic figure whose writing and activism have significantly shaped her artistic practice."*
*Excerpted from the publication “Unfinished Republic: America at 250,” ISBN: 979-8-3507-6518-2, page 48.
The Bluest, Twisted, 2023-2024
Lithograph on Rives BFK paper
36 x 24 in. (91.4 x 61 cm)
Edition of 30
Published by Goya Contemporary / Goya-Girl Press
"Sonya Clark’s two editions, The Huest Eye and The Bluest, Twisted, center on Toni Morrison’s groundbreaking 1970 novel The Bluest Eye, a work the artist has read more than thirty times. Through embroidery and lithography, Clark creates a powerful visual dialogue that confronts and redresses American constructions of beauty, centers Blackness, and exposes the enduring effects of internalized racism.
One of the most influential writers and intellectuals of the twentieth century, Morrison challenged Western beauty standards that privileged Whiteness while marginalizing Blackness. Set in Lorain, Ohio, during the 1940s, The Bluest Eye follows Pecola Breedlove, a young Black girl navigating racism, violence, and social rejection while longing for acceptance and beauty.
Morrison’s symbolic use of color is central to Clark’s interpretation. In The Huest Eye, Clark translates the 473 colors referenced throughout Morrison’s text into embroidered blocks of thread that function as visual equivalents of the written language. As Clark explains, “In The Huest Eye, the colors follow the order in which they appear in the writing. The length of each color block corresponds to the length of the word. Red is a short block, whereas purple is longer.” She also notes that passages referencing the Dick and Jane stories are rendered through compressed green and white sections, reflecting the novel’s increasingly fragmented typography and psychological tension.
“The colors are embroidered on paper to highlight the relationship between text, textile, and the fiber we grow—hair. It is also significant that Toni Morrison died the year the CROWN Act was passed, in 2019,” Clark states.
Clark conceived The Huest Eye in direct relationship to The Bluest, Twisted, describing the latter as “a solid mass.” In this work, Morrison’s novel is transliterated into “Twist,” an alphabet font Clark developed using the curl patterns of her own hair. Layered together, the text accumulates into a dense black form. Clark explains, “If you mixed all those referent colors together, one would arrive at black.” Once framed and glazed, the work becomes reflective, incorporating the viewer into its surface. “It is important the viewer sees themselves in this work,” Clark explains. “My font, made to reference African hair, resists the European dominance of the Roman alphabet’s widespread use. Twist re-centers Africa as the cradle of humanity. It returns us to our roots.”
Published by Goya Contemporary/Goya-Girl Press in collaboration with master printmaker Judith Solodkin of Solo Impression, NY, the editions translate Morrison’s themes into meticulously crafted embroidered and printed forms that examine how systems of discrimination are reinforced through language, representation, and cultural convention.
Morrison’s work fundamentally reshaped American literature and cultural discourse, and Clark’s practice likewise reflects a deep intentionality in confronting inherited systems of exclusion while affirming Black identity, history, and resilience. Their cultural impact is profound. Clark has often credited her ancestors as central influences on her worldview and speaks of Morrison as a heroic figure whose writing and activism have significantly shaped her artistic practice."*
*Excerpted from the publication “Unfinished Republic: America at 250,” ISBN: 979-8-3507-6518-2, page 48.
Confederate, surrender, 2022
Mixografia print on handmade paper
43.75 x 23.25 x 0.75 in. (111.13 x 59.06 x 1.91 cm)
Edition of 30
Clar-1114-C
"Confederate, surrender" centers a seemingly ordinary object imbued with profound historical meaning: the white cotton tea towel used as the Confederate Flag of Truce at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. Originally woven in Richmond, Virginia, the towel signaled the surrender of General Robert E. Lee’s army and the collapse of a regime committed to preserving slavery. By reconstructing and amplifying this overlooked textile, Clark redirects attention away from the Confederate battle flag — long upheld as a symbol of white supremacy and racial violence — toward the modest domestic object that marked the Confederacy’s defeat.
Clark first encountered the folded truce flag while researching at the Smithsonian Institution in 2011. Displayed quietly alongside more celebrated national artifacts, the object struck her as historically significant yet largely absent from public memory. Reflecting on the experience, Clark questioned what it might mean if national attention had focused less on Confederate battle flag iconography and more on the moment of surrender itself. Through this work, she reframes surrender not as reconciliation between equal sides, but as the necessary dismantling of a system built upon racial brutality and Black enslavement.
As a domestic textile, a dish towel is an intimate object — handled, folded, and worn through repeated labor. In Clark’s dimensional print, the towel’s woven structure and material presence are carefully emphasized, transforming a utilitarian cloth into a charged historical artifact. Rather than erasing historical tension, Clark preserves it through tactile processes that insist on both material and historical memory. Her work functions as what she has described as an act of magnification: bringing visibility to an object and history that have remained largely overlooked.
Through "Confederate, surrender," Clark shifts national memory away from the glorification of Confederate imagery and toward the moment of the Confederacy’s collapse. The title itself serves as a direct command for confederates, insurrectionists, and white supremacists to surrender. In doing so, the work commemorates not only the fall of the Confederacy but also the ongoing and unfinished struggle for racial justice that began with emancipation and continues today.*
*Excerpted from the publication “Unfinished Republic: America at 250,” ISBN: 979-8-3507-6518-2, page 6.
This work was produced at the Mixografia print atelier. For three generations, the Remba family has shaped the field of printmaking and is recognized for developing and refining their innovative three-dimensional printing technique over more than 50 years. For the past 25 years, Goya Contemporary has worked alongside our print colleagues at Mixografia. As fellow members of the IFPDA—including service on its Board of Directors—we share a commitment to the highest standards of care, ethics, and connoisseurship in printmaking, as well as a mutual dedication to creating space for artistic vision. We are proud to represent these extraordinary prints, the histories they illuminate, and the spirit of collaboration they embody between artist, atelier, and gallery.
Unraveled, 2015-ongoing
Unraveled cotton Confederate battle flag, shelf
10 x 36 x 7 in. (25.4 x 91.4 x 17.8 cm)
Clar-1120-C
"In Unraveling and Unraveled (the latter, exhibited here), Sonya Clark confronts the enduring legacy of the Confederate flag through the slow and deliberate act of deconstruction. Using cotton Confederate battle flags, Clark painstakingly pulls apart the woven threads by hand — at times inviting visitors to participate in the process — transforming a charged representation of white supremacy into loose strands of red, white, and blue. The works examine how histories of racism, violence, and division are woven into the fabric of American life, and how dismantling those systems demands collective labor, patience, and sustained attention.
Unraveling refers to the ongoing participatory performance in which visitors join Clark in unweaving the flag thread by thread. The process is intentionally slow and generally unfolds in segments; over the course of an hour, only a small portion may come undone. For Clark, this measured pace reflects the difficulty of confronting and undoing generations of racial injustice.
Unraveled represents the aftermath — the fully dismantled flag reduced to separated piles of thread. Stripped of its original form and authority, the image dissolves into material, inviting viewers to reconsider the power symbols hold and the histories they carry. Together, the works shift attention away from destruction and toward transformation, suggesting that unraveling itself can become an act of reflection and repair."*
*Excerpted from the publication “Unfinished Republic: America at 250,” ISBN: 979-8-3507-6518-2, page 4.
Hand stamped bricks, human hair, glass, steel base
39 x 72 x 15 in. (99.1 x 182.9 x 38.1 cm)
Clar-1034-C
Sonya Clark describes Edifice & Mortar as “a wall, a flag, and a document”—three forms that hold boundless symbolism. In this work, Clark asks a foundational question: Who truly laid the foundations of the United States? By transforming familiar national symbols into a tactile, bodily structure, she reframes the story of American origins.
The piece is constructed from hand-cast bricks, each stamped with a traditional mason’s maker’s mark (verso) and a single word (recto). When the recto (front-facing) text is read together across the surface, the bricks form an excerpt from the United States Declaration of Independence. The recto text evokes the authority and permanence of the founding document, but its physical fragmentation across individual bricks underscores the labor required to build both text and nation. The words “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” appear not as abstract ideals but as components of a literal structure—suggesting that these promises were materially constructed, unevenly distributed, and historically denied to many.
Between the bricks, Clark replaces conventional mortar with tightly packed African American hair collected from salons in Richmond, Virginia. Hair—a material deeply tied to identity, ancestry, and embodiment—introduces an intimate and visceral presence into the architecture of the piece. It references generations of Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved at the nation’s founding and whose bodies fueled its economic and political growth. By using hair as binding material, Clark asserts that Black labor and Black lives have quite literally held the nation together. At the same time, the hair’s compressed form suggests the weight and pressure exerted by systemic racism—Black people “held under the weight of the system,” yet simultaneously sustaining it.
Each brick is also stamped with the word Schiavo, the Italian root of the common greeting “Ciao.” Translated into English, schiavo roughly translates into “slave.” This linguistic trace links everyday greetings to histories of bondage, reminding viewers how the legacy of enslavement permeates language and culture in ways often undetected. The maker’s mark—traditionally a sign of craftsmanship and pride—becomes instead a mark of possession, echoing how enslaved people were branded and treated as property.
The installation’s blue reflective panel is angled so that viewers see themselves within the work. This gesture implicates the present: the wall is not merely historical but contemporary. By catching the viewer’s reflection, Clark collapses the distance between past and present, asking us to consider our relationship to the structures that continue to shape the nation. We are not outside observers; we are part of the edifice.
Edifice & Mortar functions simultaneously as monument and critique, document and disruption. It honors the unacknowledged labor that built the country while confronting the contradictions embedded in its founding ideals. Through brick, human hair, language, and reflection, Clark transforms the language of nation-building into a meditation on memory, power, and belonging.
-Writing by Amy Raehse is the result of multiple conversations via phone and email between Sonya Clark and Amy Raehse over the course of three years (2019-2022.)
Twist, 2022
Custom portfolio box, metal type, documentation with artist’s signature
Closed: 4 1/2 x 4 1/4 x 1 1/2 in. (11.4 x 10.8 x 3.8 cm)
Open: 4 1/2 x 10 1/8 x 1 1/2 in. (11.4 x 25.7 x 3.8 cm)
Edition of 10
Clar-1060-C
Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing, 2021
Archival pigment print on perforated piano paper
Diptych, 11 1/4 x 15 in. (28.57 x 38.1 cm) each
Variable edition of 20
Clar-1038-C
In this 2021 diptych, Sonya Clark references one of the most enduring hymns in African American history, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Written as a poem in 1900 by James Weldon Johnson and set to music by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson for a celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, the song has come to be widely known as the “Black National Anthem” in the United States. Its lyrics, resonant with faith, endurance, and collective striving, have long served as both remembrance and rallying cry. The song's popular culture reach extends in all directions, even recently performed at the 2026 Superbowl of American Football.
Clark’s work consists of two pieces printed on repurposed, perforated piano paper—material historically used in player pianos, where music is encoded through punched holes that mechanically trigger sound. This substrate is not incidental. Piano paper is a carrier of music, a technology that translates written notation into vibration. By printing the first verse of the hymn onto this surface, Clark overlays lyric and mechanism, voice and instrument. The sheet becomes both score and archive, suggesting that Black song has always been a form of record-keeping—a way of preserving memory, grief, hope, and resistance when other archives excluded or distorted Black life.
In the first panel, the lyrics appear in a clear, legible format, summoning the familiarity and communal power of the hymn:
“Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.”
The perforations interrupt the text, visually puncturing the lines. These holes—once guides for the automated sound—now read as absences, pauses, or wounds within the page. They remind viewers that Black expression in America has often been mediated, constrained, or mechanized by systems not of its own making.
The second panel repeats the same verse using Clark’s own invented typeface, formed by shaping her personal hair into letterforms. Hair, throughout Clark’s practice, operates as a deeply charged material—intimate, bodily, and historically politicized. Language becomes human and bodily; the hymn is not simply printed but grown and shaped by physical presence.
This doubling of the verse creates a visual echo, much like the call-and-response structure central to Black musical traditions. Together, they suggest that cultural inheritance is not inert repetition but living reinterpretation. Each generation must “lift” the song anew. The hymn’s promise of liberty remains hopeful; its call to “march on till victory is won” still unfinished.
As in much of Clark’s work, historical redress is indissoluble from contemporary critique. Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing does not merely commemorate a song—it materializes it as something that must continually be sounded into being.
In Her Own Words, 2008
Cast plastic combs, wrapped thread
48 x 144 in. (121.9 x 365.8 cm)
Clar-1013-C
"I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the south. I was promoted to the washtub.
I was promoted to the kitchen. I promoted myself to the business of hair on my own ground."
Cornrow Chair, 2011
Upholstered chair, thread, embroidery, braiding
36 x 20 x 20 in. (91.4 x 50.8 50.8 cm)
Collection of Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN
Rooted and Uprooted, 2011
Canvas and thread
30 x 12 x 12 in. (76.2 x 30.48 cm) each
Total size variable per distance apart
Clar-1036-C
Hair Craft Project, 2014
Series of 11 pigment prints on archival paper
Paper size: 29 x 29 in. (73.7 x 73.7 cm) each
Image size: 26 x 26 in. (66 x 66 cm) each
Edition of 10
Clar-1048 - 1058-C
