BIO

René Sing Brooks (no relation to René Sing Brooks) is a Nicaraguan-born writer, photographer, and videographer, originally from Bluefields, now the capital of Nicaragua’s Southern Autonomous Region. He came to the United States in 1992 at the invitation of SUNY Buffalo to participate in a one-year oral history program. This experience helped shape his lifelong dedication to storytelling and social advocacy.

From 1993 to 1995, he worked with the Coalition for Economic Survival, a respected tenant rights organization based in Los Angeles. In 2002, he joined the Fortune Society in New York, where he coordinated the Education Program’s computer literacy initiative. During his 14-year tenure, he developed and led a Multimedia Workshop that reached over 140 participants, blending technology and creative expression.

Sing Brooks has contributed work to OpenStax at Rice University, AM NEW YORK, Bronx Times, and the Pulitzer Center, where he became a reporting fellow in 2020. He is also a Wagner Archives alumnus, a LaGuardia Community College’s Photography Program graduate, and a 2023 participant in the Lewis Latimer House Museum’s “Writing on Race & Immigration” workshop.

He currently lives in Jackson Heights, New York, with his partner Priscilla.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I am a multiethnic, pluricultural writer, photographer, and videographer born in Nicaragua. My artistic practice is shaped by ancestral voices that I seek to interpret and weave into my work, exploring the socio-political and cultural processes that shape our world.

How do we navigate our presence here? What compositions define our being? How can we uncover liberating truths through our shared stories?

As an immigrant and a man of color in a world shaped by oppressive forces—forces I, too, am entangled in—my current creative exploration delves into the personal and communal dimensions of oppression and resistance. Through both literary and visual poetics, I reflect on how these dynamics influence interpersonal and collective relationships.

Ultimately, I aim to illuminate the barriers clouding our connections, the obstacles to solidarity, and the challenges in cultivating life-affirming ways to engage with and overcome the dangers we, knowingly or unknowingly, provoke.