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Sydney G. James

Painter, muralist.

Detail of a 2016 mural in Detroit by Sydney G. James.

Sydney G. James (left) and Scheherazade W. Parrish pose in front of a painting by the former in­cor­po­rating a poem by the latter. Photo by Alonso del Arte.

Current exhibition

• Female Gaze at Playground Detroit. Opened March 22 and slated to run to April 19.

Upcoming exhibitions

Various plans, including more stops on the Girl Raised in Detroit tour.

Past exhibitions

• Girl Raised in Detroit at Jane Lombard Gallery in New York. January 12, 2024 — February 17, 2024.
• Skilled Labor: Black Realism in Detroit at the Cranbrook Art Museum, 39221 Woodward Ave, Bloomfield Hills. October 28, 2023 — March 3, 2024.
• Girl Raised in Detroit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. April 15, 2023 — September 3, 2023.
• Portrayal, with Lamar Landers at M Contemporary Art. November 19, 2021 — December 30, 2021 RSVP through TicketLeap.
• With Rashaun Rucker, Tylonn Sawyer and Scheherazade Washington at Detroit Artists Market. June 25, 2021 — July 24, 2021.
• Hard / Soft at Galerie Camille. March 19, 2021 — April 17, 2021.
• Watch Me Work, at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities in Ann Arbor. November 9, 2020 — December 18, 2020. This exhibition was installed so that all the artwork was visible from the street, without having to go into the gallery, because of the coronavirus pandemic.
• Watch Me Work, at M Contemporary Art. October 28, 2020 — November 1, 2020.
• Sit Down Somewhere, at Playground Detroit. October 12, 2019 — November 9, 2019.
• Spark, curated by Ann Smith, at 333 Midland. July 17 — July 27, 2019.
• perSIStence, at Collected Detroit. May 3, 2019 — June 7, 2019.
• Symbiosis, curated by Melissa Jones, at Detroit Artists Market. September 7, 2018 — October 13, 2018.
• Exhibit at the Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center. Opened September 26 and slated run to October 6.
• Bent but Unbroken, curated by Anna Schaap, at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, 315 E. Warren Avenue, Detroit, Michigan. Opened July 28 and slated to run to October 29.
• The "Alumni" Exhibition, featuring one piece each from almost every artist who's gone through the Red Bull House of Art program. May 21, 2015 — September 7, 2015.
• Red Bull House of Art, Cycle 6. November 13, 2015 — ??? ??, 2016.
• ...and several more going back to 2010...

External links

• Official website
• Instagram page

News

• Randiah Camille Green, "Sydney G. James beams with Detroit pride in MOCAD solo show, but her greatest masterpiece isn’t a painting", Metro Times, April 12, 2023, pages 18 — 22.

Reviews

• Dennis Alan Nawrocki, "68 Sydney G. James", Essay'd, May 9, 2017. "As a painter, she produced a number of portraits of family and acquaintances, including a likeness of her grandfather, American Dream? (2012), and The Purge (2014), from a series entitled “House of Mirrors.” Both imply something of the anxiety of their protagonists’ predicaments; in the case of the former, the shadowed visage suggests the recognition of a dream deferred, ironically limned in an all-American palette of red, white, and blue. Many of the “House of Mirrors” images likewise focus on close up studies of intimate, unguarded moments. Executed on medicine cabinet mirrors, a setting especially conducive to one-on-one probings of the self, ... Implicit vulnerability also emerges in the installational “Appropriated Not Appreciated” series of 2016."