Shani Strand

Lives and works in New York, NY

Artist statement

Shani Strand is a multidisciplinary artist working across sculpture, video and installation to consider ungovernability in a post-colonial and globalized world. She uses materials and practices from the Caribbean and its diaspora as metonyms for what is invisible: ghosts, infrastructure, and history. She is one half of Sucking Salt, a project that archives Caribbean architecture and aesthetics to diversify architectural history and to assert the Caribbean as a site of material importance and a major intersection of various cultures and colonial histories.

Artwork

• I hope you learn how to shell peas and roast breadfruit + Praying on it (i-viii), 2026. Metal stool, ceramic, cow hide, Jova bricks, cowrie shells, gold thread
• Careless of futurity / Black Horizon (i-iv), 2026. Wrought iron, ceramic, glass, sugar cane ash
• And what? (i + ii) , 2026. Cow horns, fiber glass, chrome spindle
• Abeng (i-viii) + Corpus (i-ix), 2026. Cow horns, fiberglass, cow hide, sand
• R.I.P. He Deserves It, 2026. Installation view
• R.I.P He Deserves It (Trailer) , 2026. Video, Sound
• Get Me Bodied, 2023. Concrete, sand, stain, paint, rebar, ceramic, human teeth, iPhone with cracked screen, iPhone charger, cotton
• Have you considered that you're trapped?, 2023. Ceramic, patina'd iron, black sand
• Got no papamummy, 2023. Ceramic, sorrel, acrylic, vinyl
• No Telephone to Heaven (The Freedom of Unfreedom), 2023. Installation view
• No Telephone to Heaven (The Freedom of Unfreedom) – (Trailer), 2023. Video with sound
• under-construction-present, 2024. Rebar, wood, glass beads, paint, sinew
• Duppy (Don't Wait for Karma), 2024. Ceramic, human teeth, metal chain, Empire brick
• (Duppy) Happy Baby Douen, 2024. Concrete, ceramic, oxide wash
• Duppy (nuff salt) , 2024. Ceramic, human teeth
• Duppy (ran through as a parallel for exploitation) , 2022. Concrete, fabric