Sonja Henderson

Sonja Henderson (she/her) is an award-winning, Chicago-based sculptor, educator, and community organizer. She received her BFA from the SAIC in Painting and Drawing and went on to receive her MFA in Sculpture and Installation from U.C. Berkeley. Sonja embraces restorative justice practices to create communal placemaking and safe spaces for healing, rest and play.

Certificate of Congressional Recognition, Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till Memorial; Till National (non-contiguous) Memorial, Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till Memorial; Atlantic Center for the Arts, Mentoring Artist #193.

We Are Made From Stars, quilted flag memorial, Sears Sunken Garden, 3330 W. Arthington St., Chicago, IL; MLK Living Memorial, Marquette Park, 3201 W. Marquette Rd., Chicago, IL; Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till Memorial, 7329 W. 63rd St. Summit, IL; Litany, Blanc Gallery Chicago; RE: Purpose, South Side Community Art Center.

A premiere memorial artist, Sonja received Congressional Recognition for the life-size cast-bronze Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till Memorial honoring the life and legacy of Civil Rights activist Mamie Till-Mobley. This seminal monument is recognized by Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, and President Biden, and will become part of the Till National Park, the nation's first noncontiguous Monument.

Sonja also designed and sculpted the Martin Luther King, Jr. Living Memorial. This 42-foot plaza, with three 10 foot high hand-carved pillars with curved benches and community tiles, tells the story of MLK’s Chicago based Fair Housing Marches, in 1966. Sonja curates intimate cultural spaces while also building monumental structures, constructed from cast bronze, carved brick, organic material, mosaics, and textiles. She creates public installations and placemaking like The September 11th, Wall of Remembrance, centering collective mourning and storytelling while also co-curating international cultural activations like the Rwandan Girls Exchange, in which 12 high school aged girls infected or affected by HIV/Aids traveled from Chicago to Kigali Rwanda and back to build international community, de-stigmatize HIV/Aids and to just be young girls. Sonja is now a shortlisted artist who has submitted inspired concept pieces for the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial, We Shall Rise: Mother Jones Monument; Austin Soul City Gateways and the Naomi Anderson Suffragette Memorial. Sonja is currently working on the redesign and public art installation for the Damen Avenue Open Air Plaza in the Back of the Yards, the Ray Charles Easley Memorial in Austin, and a large-scale temporal installation for the Monument Response Project.

In January 2020, Sonja founded the Mothers Healing Circle for mothers who lost children to violence. The Mothers Healing Circle seeks to rejuvenate Mothers and rebuild their surviving families by introducing woman-centered and ancestral practices like: guided meditation, sonic and vibrational healing, movement and yoga, horticultural and massage therapy and plant based medicines and nutrition. MHC believes that healing our Mothers is the first step in healing the family, community and nation. In 2023 the mothers raised a temporal “quilt-flag" monument in honor of their children.

Sonja writes:

“Public memorials are a way for us all to grieve, honor, and celebrate special people while also creating space for collective healing around traumatic events. Memorials are spaces of sacred placemaking that center communal needs while giving reverence to the land in which they are built.”