76. SHANTI BELL: A SPACE BETWEEN NARRATIVE AND NAVIGATE.

The Room that Shared, MAMA - LONDON.

Shanti Bell, photograph: André Jacques, image courtesy of the artist, 2024.

‘Space for me goes hand in hand with sensation and feeling. Finding spaces that make you feel safe, loved, heard, held, and alive - can be hard to pinpoint and are often fleeting moments.’ S.B.

Please introduce your exhibition 'The Room that Shared’.

The Room that Shared is a project I have thought about for a long time. How can the laughter between two sisters or the bickering between mother and son be translated into sculpture and form? By interviewing many different people, it became about navigating these different narratives which shared many overlaps and differences, and creating pieces that reflected how nuanced and complicated family is. Human interaction was a constant thread within this project - this work was about people so it had to be for people. The sculptures were family and when you engaged with them they became home and in turn communicated different stories of family relationships through the sensations and materials used.

Asking people to remove their shoes when entering the gallery space and offering pieces that could be touched, laid on, and interacted with was also about challenging the normal structure of gallery spaces. Boundaries could be crossed, connections could be made and natural human overlaps happened.

The way you play with space is fascinating - in an architectural space but also in a very physical - bodily way - and I see that this instinct continues with your new work - please can you expand on how and why you engage with space and the way you explore volume...

Space for me goes hand in hand with sensation and feeling. Finding spaces that make you feel safe, loved, heard, held, and alive - can be hard to pinpoint and are often fleeting moments. Within this project, I was bringing forth sculptures that offered sensations, compelled engagement, and were activated by the body. The element of unknown was how different people would then choose to engage with the pieces. The negative space that exists around us and what it can communicate when we engage with other people is very reflective of how we view ourselves and our relationships. I almost feel compelled to explore this intangible space that surrounds us every day.

When I first visited the gallery I knew instantly that this project was to be site-specific and engage with the natural architecture of the gallery. I wanted to challenge what the gallery experience could be and so the pieces need to feel at one with the space by creating spaces that the body would have to navigate and that would alter someone’s personal space. Volume and scale are both things I will continually engage with within my practice. I see my sculptures and forms only getting bigger exploring how they can challenge spaces that already exist and offer new spaces within.

Blue feels important to you, a feeling of a fallen sky which envelopes, splashing and lucid - can you expand upon your returning use of blue...

Without realising I think I am instinctively drawn to blue, it wasn’t until The Missing Thread project that a friend commented that it’s my signature colour. There’s an infinity I find in the colour blue representing both the sea and sky. These two forms of nature I reach for when I am searching for ways to ground and re-connect and so in some ways placing distinct shades of blue within my creative palette offers a moment for connection. In many ways, we can often miss what is important to us but subconsciously it will find its way into our spaces offering comfort and familiarity - the reoccurrence of blue in many ways I think provides that for me.

There is a sensitive approach to remaining authentic I aim to maintain when creating a project. The blue foam that is featured in The Room that Shared is that material in its pure form. That specific shade of blue, the creases it holds, and the memory it retains are all part of its narrative and it was important to honour that. We hope that people will take us how we are in the form, colour, shape we come in and that has been my approach to working with these materials. The inclusion of foam was instinctual and yet the shade of blue that it provides was a welcomed familiar presence.

Shanti Bell, installation for ‘The Missing Thread’, Somerset House, 2024. Photograph Reinis Lismanis, Image courtesy Shanti Bell.

I feel listening is very key to your practice, you listen to materials - within their surfaces and their sounds, to the souls of people, to space itself... do you see your practice as a form of meditation and if so what have your learnt from processing your instincts in this way?

The varying degrees that the space family occupies is a turbulent, ever-shifting, complicated and deeply fulfilling one. In many ways, I use my practice as a medium to comprehend and make sense of the complexities family can come in. It is healing to confront things internally and I find comfort in exploring this through creative means. I am always continuing to learn that I am a work in progress as I constantly shift and change - reacting and discovering the world. It is the combination of understanding to trust myself and give myself grace for not having all the answers.

The ears hold so much power as sound adds much context to the world around us. Listening to my surroundings, to the community that is around me, and the spaces I occupy and interact with, I find to be an integral tool to how I not only navigate my creative practice but life. Pausing to listen to offers moments of contemplation, moments to be taught and a space to simply be an open receiver.

Freedom plays an important role within your practice, can you expand upon how you have explored this within your work?

Being present to the fact that I am free and alive is something I show gratitude for as much as I can. There is always a thread of freedom in every project I explore - the freedom to creatively express is rare and I am grateful for it. What I hope The Room that Shared offers is a space for others to feel free and be free within. Freedom to touch and sit and interact with the different sculptures, freedom to not have to be cautious when navigating the gallery - we are all at home here. Someone at the exhibition described the space as “If rest were a playground, this would be it.” Moments to play, be curious, be childlike, be expressive, explore and simply be, aren’t always a given and so offering a space in which you could feel comfortable to be free and to do this was crucial.

How I often work is in an instinctive nature with a strong sense of play - I look at ways I can push boundaries of materials, spaces and challenge myself as an artist. With no agenda other than to create works that are reflective of the concept and authentic in their voice allows a freedom of thought, a free way to make and construct, and a sense of freedom to be an artist in the form I feel that occupies.