Next Big Thing: Kelly Sinnapah Mary

There are many tales to be told in the rich works of Kelly Sinnapah Mary. With a practice spanning painting, sculpture, and installation, the Guadeloupe-based artist pulls from a tapestry of folklore, literature, history, and nature to create vibrant, imagined worlds that challenge the ongoing constructs of colonialism. “My work explores narratives in which the intimate and the collective respond to one another,” says Sinnapah Mary, who has exhibited at the Pérez Art Museum Miami; the 34th Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil; and most recently at a James Cohan gallery pop-up in Paris. “I am deeply interested in heritage and memory, particularly the history of my ancestors, who were indentured laborers from India. I seek to reactivate their traces, protecting ancestral knowledge and constructing an intimate, family mythology that connects to a collective memory that is often obscured,” she explains.

Unique process: Sinnapah Mary begins by researching—poring through old pictures, books, and family albums, “weaving links between my collection of images and texts to create a constellation of stories, memories, and possible forms,” before sketching and ultimately painting. “I love how working on a large scale profoundly changes the vision of the story. Bigger paintings offer more places and possibilities to research and utilize within the canvas.”

Up next: She is presenting a multipanel work at the exhibition “The Earth, the Fire, the Water and the Winds,” at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo, through January 2026. She is also working on her first major U.S. solo museum show, in 2027, at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and another at Art at Americas Society in New York.

A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2025 Winter issue under the headline “Next Big Things.” Subscribe to the magazine.