Sonia Shiel

Sonia Shiel's interdisciplinary practice combines key methodologies from art and theatre to imbue characteristics, autonomy and fictional narratives in the works she creates. Usurping the normal conditions of an artwork with a kind of self-conscious agency usually reserved for living things, her works are often free-standing; traversable; presented with their own volition, backstory or environment; and sometimes consolidated within installations that use audio-work, live performance or video.

Selected exhibitions include Medusa In Pieces, VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow (2023–24); Supernatural Bureua, Kunstverein Aughrim, Wicklow (2023), I Am What You've Come To See at Void, Derry (2019); How The Oyster Makes The Pearl at the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin (2019), and Rectangle Squared at The Crawford Art Gallery, Cork (2017). She has completed residencies at UCD's School of English, Drama and Film and at Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; the NCAD Gallery Incubation Residency Award; the Art and Law Program, Fordham University, New York; the ISCP, New York; Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin; CCI, Paris; City of Frankfurt; and HIAP, Helsinki. She is represented by the Kavin Kavanagh Gallery. She has work in a number of public collections, including the Glucksman, the Arts Council, the DLR Municipal Collection; the Office of Public Works; and The City of Frankfurt.