Shantell Martin

Early years

Shantell Martin was born in East London and studied at Bexleyheath School in Southeast London. After a year at Camberwell College of Arts, also Southeast London, UK (1991-1999), Martin was admitted to Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design in London, England. She graduated with honors in 2003.

She has been drawing since she was a little girl growing up in the Thamesmead estate public housing complex in London. Since she wasn’t allowed to draw on the walls, she would take a pen and draw characters underneath her bed and inside the curtains in her bedroom. It was then that she first developed the stick figures that show up in her work today. “There are two types of stick men, those who push and pull and hold the work together,” says Martin. “And then there are the stick men who play around and are lazy. It’s a reminder that you have to work and you have to have fun.”

As the only mixed-race child in a family full of blonde, blue-eyed siblings, she always felt different. Perhaps that’s why, from an early age, Martin has been asking herself the same question: Who are you? The existential angst followed her to Central Saint Martins, where she studied graphic design. It was a time when she describes herself as an angry and confused college student. “Growing up in a white working-class environment and not feeling in control of your future or environment or potential can be frustrating,” she notes. To express herself, the artist developed a character named Hangman. “It is a kind of robot-shaped character and I would tag it all around London,” she explains. “Hangman was a businessman in his former life and he decided to cut the noose—home environment, the class system, the prejudice, and people’s low expectations.”

After her graduation, she lived in Japan where she first experimented with live performance art. From 2006 to 2009, Martin developed her drawing skills through “Liveography”—the process of projecting live drawings to sound, music or other experience. She performed at music concerts, design festivals and in public spaces internationally. She also created a series of micro-detailed drawings in a series of 27 notebooks, which would later become the subject of a book.

Current Work

In 2009, Martin moved to New York. This period marked the next phase of her career, where she began to focus primarily on physical drawing. In New York, Martin continued to focus on a number of personal, commercial and collaborative projects. She has experimented with different techniques and media including textiles, ceramics, circuitry, and embroidery. Martin’s current body of work explores themes of transparency, identity and experience.

Her first solo exhibition, Continuous Line, was held at Black and White Gallery in Brooklyn, New York and, her first solo museum show ARE YOU YOU opened at the Museum of the Contemporary African Diaspora in Brooklyn. This was followed by Black and White, a collaboration in embroidery with her grandmother, featured as a part of the Brooklyn Museum group show Crossing Brooklyn, from October 3 - January 4, 2015.

In addition to contributing to a body of work, Martin is a public figure. In 2012 her Bed-Stuy bedroom and artwork were featured in the New York Times' Home and Garden Section. Her personal style has been documented in Vogue Magazine, and the New Yorker Magazine created on a short video on her creative process in 2014, called Follow the Pen.

Exhibitions

The Rise of Sneaker Culture, Group Show, Brooklyn Museum (New York) (July 10 - October 4, 2015)

New Idols, Group show, Studio 301 (New York) (September 5 - October 5, 2015)

Crossing Brooklyn, Group Show, Brooklyn Museum (New York) (October 3 - January 4, 2015)

Are You You, Museum of the Contemporary African Diaspora (New York) (April 26 - July 27, 2014)

Outdoor Installation, Out of the Box: The Rise of Sneaker Culture, Bata Shoe Museum, (Toronto) (May 2013 - June 2014)

Continuous Line, Solo Show, Black and White Gallery, Brooklyn New York (September 21 – October 28, 2012)

Mix Tape at Milk Gallery (New York) (June 15, 2012)

Message on a Bottle, Solo Show at World Six (Florida) (2011)

Signal to Noise (Live Performance), Museum of Moving Image (New York) (January 15, 2011)

Residencies and Other Positions

Adjunct professor at ITP, NYU Tisch School of the Arts (2013–present)

Visiting Scholar at MIT Media Lab, Social Computing group (2014–present)

Advisory Board Member, Climate Museum (2015)

P3 Studio Artist Resident, Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas, NV (September 14 - October 10, 2015)

Summit Series Artist in Residence (April 6–18, 2015)

New Frontier Artist, Sundance Institute (2014)

Ambassador, Global Poverty Project (2013)

Clark College Artist in Residence (Vancouver, Washington) (April 26 - May 6, 2013)