Shathy Bano
MA Fine Art
I am a Bengali British female visual fine artist with a background in social work and therapeutic community art. Creativity, Connection and Community access to art are core strong values for me.
My family migrated during the civil war between Bangladesh and Pakistan in 1971 when I was a child. My art to date draws on my intersectional life experiences to explore the fluid nature of cultural identity, transformation, and loss through the generations and the evolving, yet transitory, notion of home and sense of identity and place. This has been represented through mixed media art using a narrative approach.
As for many second and third generation British Asians, the crossover between western and eastern influences is central to my life experience. And, in many ways, it is the exploration of this interchange that defines my work, an encounter characterised by fluidity and blending rather than fixed adherence to either western or eastern artistic tradition.
In my work to date I have focussed on the symbolism of nature and cultural imagery that defines both my heritage and the re-creation of my identity through western cultural influence. I have a longstanding interest in expressionist and abstract artists and the use of colour and materials within three-dimensional visual art as a language for communicating complex aspects of identity and influence.
My artwork during the MA course drew on an in-depth material experimentation on these themes of identity, connection and belonging, as well as extensive background research of artists interpretations and arts-based participatory research with people of dual heritage. I look forward to developing this further through my art practice.
