Shannon Bono (b. 1995, London) received her MA in painting from the Royal College of Art supported by the RCA BLK Sir Frank Bowling scholarship in 2024 and also holds an Art and Science MA from Central Martins. This year Bono has been awarded the Paul Smith Foundation x Winsor & Newton International Art Prize and she was also selected by his majesty the King to contribute in the ‘Portraits of a Generation’ project, which is featured on BBC 2, this touring exhibition has been displayed at the National portrait Gallery and will remain in the permanent Royal Collection.
Bono’s paintings embody an afrofemcentrist consciousness, centralising the experiences of black womanhood through her lens. Using oils, acrylics, and spray paints, she is invested in producing layered, figurative, compositions embedded with symbolism that centralise black womanhood as a source of knowledge and understanding. Bono’s paintings provide a portal to an alternative dimension where magic occurs, in this alternate realm she demonstrates the interactions with spiritual beings and artifacts that support the subject in their everyday lives. Enamored by African spirituality, Christian iconography, and Renaissance art, she employs its purpose of cultural impact for an improved society. Her work explores the internal body as well as the external, by merging the design of notable fabrics from Africa with scientific imagery providing a visual language for magic and divination as the foundations of her storytelling. The anatomy acts as a second canvas in the foreground, using the body as a powerful signifier that provokes dialogue by playing with pose, gesture, and the gaze to challenge reality.
Recent solo exhibitions include; ‘Shannon Bono’, Adrian Sutton Gallery, Brussels (2024); ‘The hands that hold you’, Anderson Contemporary, London (2021). Group exhibitions include; ‘A Tender Embrace’, Art x Lagos, Affinity Art Gallery, Lagos (2024); ‘Christie’s Lates: Voices of Black Artistry’, Christies, London (2024); ‘Across the Pond: Contemporary Painting in London’, Eric Firestone Gallery, New York (2024); ‘Stretching the light’, Rele Gallery, London (2024); ‘Windrush: Portraits of a pioneering Generation’, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol (2024); Earth Monsters, Sarabande the Lee Alexander McQueen Foundation, London (2024); ‘Floating in Place’, Affinity Art Gallery, Lagos (2024); ‘Hold Me Now’, Ione & Mann Gallery, London (2023); ‘Windrush: Portraits of a pioneering Generation’, National Portrait Gallery, London & Edinburgh (2023); ‘Like Paradise’, Claridge’s Art Space x Wick Culture, London (2023); ‘Tangle Teaser’, Sarabande the Lee Alexander McQueen Foundation, London (2023); ‘Manifold Deluxe’, FF Projects, London (2023); ‘RHIZOME’, Ione & Mann Gallery, London (2023).
Bono was selected for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries award 2021 which displayed at Firstsite and The South London Gallery. Her work has been presented on the Maximus billboard in partnership with Black Blossoms and the Kensington and Chelsea Art week, The Piccadilly lights and billboards in New York transit systems in collaboration with Artsy. Bono’s work has also been featured in Dazed Magazine and online press by Elephant magazine, Wallpaper magazine, Vogue, Bazaar, i-D and Soho house.