Vania Sulley is a Ghanaian-American multi-disciplinary artist, currently residing in Chicago where she is completing her Master’s degree in Art Therapy and Counseling at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Vania is a spoken word artist and her chosen visual mediums are acrylics, oil pastels, mixed media, and collaging, specifically the practice of transforming her physical and digital collages into larger scale paintings and drawings using mixed media materials. Vania finds ways to highlight her passion for black culture and art in her pieces and aims to bring awareness to the fleeting nature of life. This art practice, with a large focus on growth and what each piece of art can teach her about herself, informs her clinical practice as an art therapist.
Owning Our Sadness, 2025, Mixed media collage, 65 x 65 in.
A piece composed of different collage pieces created to navigate grief and explore the topic of legacy.
The focus of my body of work is always rooted in growth. Every time I create a new piece of art, be it a poem, painting, drawing, or sculpture, I always learn something new about myself or about my creative process. I’ve learned that this growth does not occur when I am creating pieces inside my comfort zone. I grow from challenging myself when I am creating, which is why I pushed myself to work on a project about grief.
We are all going to pass away at some point, and while the human ego plays a big role in preventing humans from accepting death as an experience they will have to endure, it has no control over stopping death from actually occurring. We as humans still have to experience death on a primary, or secondary level, at some point in our lifetimes. As a society, we have become so far removed from the idea of dying that it’s “never us,” until the moment it becomes us, and we have no choice but to stare at death in the face. This removal desensitizes us from the reality of grief and loss.
Grief, loss, and legacy are topics that challenge me and push me outside of this comfort zone, as I am someone who aspires to maintain a lighthearted and whimsical mindset. This project forced me to learn and grow and sit in the reality that is death and dying.