Shannon Lewis
holds a BFA degree from OCADU in Toronto. After relocating to London, she completed her MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University. Shannon currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
The construction of power and pleasure underpin Shannon’s practice, which is primarily located in painting and fabric installation. There is constant play with absurd or sinister incongruities, to destabilize the unconscious archives of the viewer so power relations can shift.
This strategy is also used to interrogate how the constructs of femininity are created, maintained and inconspicuously enforced. Collage and transparencies are purposely used to create new sexual symbols and codes outside of worn narratives from the fragments of what can still be useful. Dissident laughter runs throughout all of the work, where the narrator may be unreliable. This narrator hovers between wanting to desperately participate in the trappings of privilege and wanting to tear down the structures that provide them.