Soteria Shepperson

Lives and works in Atlanta, GA

Artist statement

My practice lives at the intersection of art, language, memory, resistance, and survival. I am an interdisciplinary artist whose work moves through visual art, poetry, music, spoken word, storytelling, public and motivational speaking, event production, and community engagement. Across these forms, I use language as both material and action: a way to name what is happening, preserve what is at risk of being erased, and imagine what may still be possible. As a Black queer woman and ARTivist, I examine what remains visible when people and communities are pressured to disappear, become silent, or follow paths that were never designed for them. My visual work incorporates acrylic and spray paint, paint markers, repurposed garments, adhesive decals, found objects, foam, and unconventional surfaces. Through cutting, layering, painting, dripping, and reassembling, I build upon the histories already carried by these materials. Across my practice, I return to questions of visibility, power, justice, identity, rest, movement, and inherited resistance. Whether I am transforming an everyday object, writing a poem or song, producing an event, or speaking before an audience, I create work that invites people to recognize themselves, question the systems around them, and imagine new ways of becoming. My work moves between the personal, cultural, and political without treating them as separate realities. I do not create to offer simple answers. I create to make experience visible, turn...

Artwork