bio
Shannon is a multidisciplinary artist living
in Philadelphia, PA.
Shannon Brooks creates playful, strange worlds to experiment within interstitial spaces between the body, the material world, and the imaginary. Shannon believes Disability and access are generative creative forces that change time, space, and power structures. Through performance, movement,and film/video, Shannon’s multimedia practices cultivate tactile, embodied experiences to explore touch-based knowledge, unseen forces, and the edges of our capacities.
Shannon’s work has been presented at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, AUTOMAT, Icebox Project Space, the Art Room Studio, Window Seat Media, and Venice Island Performing Arts Center. Shannon is a co-founder of Hook&Loop, a collective of Disabled artists in Philadelphia, through which she has programmed virtual workshops and artwork with artists such as Krishna Washburn, Jaither West, Kayla Hamilton, Christopher Unpezverde Núñez, iele paloumpis, HYP-ACCESS and more. Shannon is the founder of UNDUE BURDEN, a digital community archive and exhibition series created and led by Disabled people in Philadelphia. Shannon has received support from the Philadelphia Office for the Arts and The Velocity Fund and was a 2021 Leeway Art for Change Grant recipient. She is a part of Leah Stein Dance Company and has worked with artists such as Leah Stein, Annie WIlson, Annie Heath, Oona Taper, Donna Oblongata, Lauren Bakst, and Dawn States.
My research practice is an eroding, ever-transforming bedrock that develops from a place of care. My facilitation works to be trauma-informed and accessible to disabled, queer, and aging people. I consider pain, disability and access as generative, creative forces that change time, space, and power structures. My practice grows trust in our touch sense and impulses to explore the memories, histories, and ghosts fossilized as archives in our environments, bodies, and imaginations.