Shannon Bono

Bono experiments across painting, collage and sculpture to tell dynamic stories of Black womanhood. With the exception of her mother and close friends, she largely paints herself from photographs with oil paint. The works recall the grandiose liturgy of Renaissance and Byzantine art, and seamlessly thread African textile cultures with scientific images of sickle and nerve cells - a symbol of cultural and physiological life. Following principles of Afrofemcentrism, Bono uses the Black femme body to uncover histories and present themes of liberation and self-autonomy.

Shantel (2020) is one of the few portraits that isn’t of the artist herself. Instead, it depicts her friend’s partner who is eight months pregnant. The painting represents a queer couple's tenacious attempts to conceive and the challenges of finding a Black sperm donor in the UK. Positioned between two traditional fertility statues, Shantel’s gaze reflects both the fatigue of the process and the staunch determination to create a family. The work embodies the sentiment of the ‘oppositional gaze’ coined by seminal writer and activist bell hooks. In doing so, Bono reframes the power dynamics of portraiture in wholly autonomous works of art.