Shani Strand
Artist-in-Residence
April 25-May 9, 2022

From the Artist:

For my residency at Automata Arts I creatied an evolving installation in the window display. I performed thinking about ghosts and the world as a giant graveyard with life produced alongside hauntings. How do we live? How do we cope? How do we pay respect? Can we disrespect the dead? Is it wrong to? Is death any type of great equalizer or just evidence of power enacted directly or indirectly? When you pray, do you hope that the wills of the dead manifest in the lives of the living? 

As a part of my residency at Automata I live-streamed programming of 12 curated performances, video works, readings, and mixes from myself and others!  – each were available for a full 24 hours. All streams (were) available at this link: https://www.twitch.tv/duppybb

Artists invovled: Vijay Masharani, Zenobia, Kerly Noisette, Cielo Saucedo, Kamron Hazel, Salim Green, Kearra Amaya Gopee,
Emir West, Carlos Agredano, Rayna Holmes, Alyssa Mattocks, Kaur Alia Ahmed.

Shani Strand (b. 1995 New York, NY/ raised Teaneck, NJ) is concerned with epistemologies of violence: its production, consumption, commodification, and dispersion. Using vernacular and globalized language I explore aesthetics that appear across cultures, particularly out of post/neo-colonial conditions of Jamaica and its diaspora: the mythologies and mediums of Babylon and Armageddon. She holds a BFA and BA from Oberlin College and is currently an MFA Sculpture Candidate at UCLA. 

shanistrand.xyz
IG: @foxybrownfastcar