BIO Shana de Villiers (they/them) is a South African artist-cobbler and seamstress of scraps based in The Hague, The Netherlands. They construct wearables, installations, and theatrical places by borrowing and transforming found images, texts & textiles. They have a BA in Fine Art from the Royal Academy of Art The Hague.
Themes of pluralities and the monster that emerges from the colonial narrative is an ember in Shana’s research, visuals, and storytelling - the text Can the Monster Speak? by Paul B. Preciado weaves through them just as much as printing hybrid-cryptid-meme Patchling onto fabric. Through patchwork, performance, and publishing (The Three P’s) the body becomes both canvas and storyteller, animating the connective tissues between queer post-colonial histories, crises, tactilities, and beings.
For Shana, language is a heavy fabric that needs material flesh to carry it. Our bodies - monstrous, interconnected by the weave of umbilical cords - become the site where histories and futures collide.
