Sonya Whitefield is an artist based in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
She studied art at Ulster University and went on to specialise in Photography at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art and Design 1984 – 1987. She has been developing international arts projects for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland for the last seven years, as well as with major arts venues and festivals.
Her most recent project ‘Travelling In A Strange Land’ is a creative collaboration with the highly acclaimed Irish writer David Park and is a personal artistic response to his novel of the same title which was published by Bloomsbury in March 2018. With influences from the photographer Bill Brandt, the works explore a reflective journey through the themes of familial love and loss, combining imagery with text to present a moving, thoughtful and at times chilling reflection of a very human story. The work was documented in the Irish Times in July 2018 and prestigious all Ireland journal Irish Pages. It was also exhibited as part of the John Hewitt Summer School at Market Place Theatre, Armagh and, in December 2018, in a performative context in the Seamus Heaney Home Place.
An earlier work, 'The Journey of the Hysterectic Woman', turns scrutiny inwards, charting by means of fairytale, myth and a darkened inverted ‘wonderland’ mood, one woman’s journey through the long ceremony of a hysterectomy operation and its several aftermaths. It challenges conventional perception and asks questions as to how, with i
