ARTIST STATEMENT
I am an interdisciplinary visual artist interested in how cultural inheritance and societal expectations inform how we live our lives. I consider my role within a larger intergenerational legacy, placing my experience as a first-generation American woman, mother, and artist into a broader social context. I investigate how identity, memory, and domesticity intersect, using the overlooked materials and rituals of everyday life to expose and challenge the social structures that shape lived experiences.
My practice is research-based and diaristic. Employing strategies utilized by artists such as Mary Kelly and Mierle Laderman Ukeles, I regularly incorporate daily maintenance activities into my practice, sourcing working material directly from my domestic space. By using household dust as the primary material in my screen prints, a byproduct of my work as a primary caregiver, I draw attention to the often overlooked, undervalued work of mothers and caregivers. Through material choices, my work reframes domestic labor and caregiving as sites of cultural production, knowledge, and memory. By elevating overlooked materials and everyday rituals, I seek to highlight the social value of care and how it shapes identity across generations.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born to Irish parents, Shannon Cleere grew up in Brazil and Indonesia, moving to the United States to attend the Evergreen State College in Washington State. She completed coursework in Florence, Italy, at Lorenzo de’ Medici – The Italian International Institute as part of her BA, studying fresco restoration, art history, and the Italian language. She earned her MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2024 and was awarded the VCFA Center for Arts + Social Justice Fellowship Grant.
As a CASJ fellow, Cleere interrogated the vast inequities of unpaid domestic labor, illustrating how capitalism repeatedly exploits women’s bodies, labor, and emotional capacities. She is co-founder of l l l Artist Fund, an artist grant provider, and is a Teaching Artist for Path with Art, a Seattle non-profit organization offering arts programming to individuals affected by trauma.
Cleere exhibits in cities across the US, most recently in Answer as Question, a juried group show in partnership with the Seattle Art Museum, and in Those Who Tend at Warnes Contemporary in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been featured in publications such as Entre Rios Books’ 2023 City of Dreadful Night by James Thomson, Suboart Magazine, and Collective Arts Network Journal. Cleere lives and works in Seattle, Washington.
© Shannon Cleere