Sonya Darrow is a Czech-American community-based artist, sociologist, and cultural practitioner whose textile-based, ritual-informed practice understands making as a mode of inquiry through which social memory and cultural continuity are carried in everyday life. Positioned between art and sociology, Darrow works through the practices of both fields, understanding artistic and sociological inquiry as braided forms of engagement with peripheral cultural practices, particularly folklore and human–environment relations, as they take shape in contemporary life.

Darrow is the founder of the movement Folklore’s Not Dead, developed in collaboration with Nadace Veronica, the Czech Republic’s oldest environmental foundation. The movement is an ongoing, community-driven initiative that examines folklore as a living social form rooted in everyday practice. It foregrounds how folklore operates simultaneously at the margins and the center of local life, shaping relationships, values, and temporal rhythms. Through collective making, research, and public engagement, Folklore’s Not Dead invites folklore to be carefully rewoven into present-day social worlds, attending to its complexity, its vulnerabilities, and its capacity to endure through shared practice. Darrow is currently based between Brno and Vienna, with projects extending across the Czech Republic, Austria, and beyond.