Shayna Fonseka

Shayna Fonseka (b. London) is a British-Sri Lankan artist working with a range of organic and synthetic materials, from clay, steel, paint, wallpaper, stickers, foliage, and bricks. She holds an MFA from the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University, a BFA from the Slade School of Art, and a diploma from Central Saint Martins.

Fonseka’s imagery and materials joyfully scatter like confetti. She crafts playful operations that look up, down, walk, and hold perspectives. These assemblages are discoveries to be stumbled upon, they encourage the viewer to meander, to change position, and to kneel intimately to their low-ground level. To echo the gestures she embodies during her wandering walks through the city. These discoveries exist between the architecture of a given space and spaces of placelessness, where we lose our egos to connect with our surroundings.
Her work examines urban spaces as personal sites of transcendence, exploring how sensory and spatial experiences cultivate a grounded sense of being amid growing instability.

Fonseka was recently awarded the Erna Plachte Award 2024 and shortlisted for the Oxford Review of Books Art Award.

Personal website.