Sydney G. James Artist | Detroit

PBS | AMERICAN MASTERS | "Sydney G. James: How We See Us" 

Press | Essence, Metal Magazine

Fine arts painter and muralist Sydney G. James is proudly a girl raised in, and by, Detroit.

Her murals have transformed Detroit’s skyline and its arts narrative, and helped her earn a coveted 2017 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellowship.

It is Sydney’s artworks – on walls, on canvas, on fabric, on Vans shoes; on whatever she damned well chooses – that give her name and her life a fierce focus. She is a painter on a pointed mission to let each brush stroke spark conversations long silenced. In paintings and murals, Black women are first. Never last and never forgotten. Her works boldy rewrite the narrative in hues evoking the complexities of Black reality, joy and pain, and phoenix-like resilience.

Her artwork has been exhibited at Detroit’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Design ( MOCAD), the Charles H. Wright Museum, Inner State Gallery, PlayGround Detroit Gallery, Collective Detroit Gallery, Detroit Artist Market, Red Bull House of Art; and Janice Charach galleries as well as the Arts, Beats and Lyrics traveling exhibit. Sydney’s murals have lit up walls in New Orleans, Brooklyn, NY; Atlanta, GA.; Los Angeles, CA.; Pow Wow Hawaii, Pow Wow Long Beach, Pow Wow Worcester, and across six continents.

She is one of the founders of BLKOUT Walls Festival, launched in the North End neighborhood of Detroit in Summer of 2021. James has displayed her art at MOCAD, the Charles H. Wright Museum, Inner State Gallery, PLAYGROUND DETROIT, Collective Detroit Gallery, Detroit Artist Market, Red Bull House of Art, and Janice Charach gallery. She has completed public murals in Detroit for the 2015-2018 Murals in the Market (recognized by Smithsonian Magazine as one of the world’s best), New Orleans, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Pow Wow Hawaii, Pow Wow Long Beach, Pow Wow Worcester, and Accra, Ghana. Sydney is the recipient of the prestigous 2017 Kresge Fellowship award.