Finnegan Shannon

Multidisciplinary artist Finnegan Shannon creates interventions that prioritize accessibility. Their works reflect their overarching practice, which emphasizes making both physical and digital spaces more accessible and addresses the lack of provisions for basic physical needs such as fatigue and exhaustion. For example, within the contemporary art world's white cube space, in which furnishings themselves can become art, Shannon demonstrates that access can only be ensured when spaces and protocols are reconceived based on multiple needs, rather than conforming to the ideology of a normative body. In this way, the act of sitting becomes a protest, where the occupation of space suggests the presence of political bodies who often remain invisible in protest marches that require participants to be mobile. The day clocks, entitled “Have you ever fallen in love with a clock?”, move so slowly that it is difficult to tell if they are working at all. Shannon invites viewers to think about the question, “What are the objects of disability culture?” ...

Deborah Schamoni is a contemporary art gallery based in Munich, Germany. Situated in a 1970s villa, the gallery is able to offer its artists a spacious white cube, flooded with daylight and opening up to a greened outdoor area, as well as an independent smaller room. Since its founding in 2013, the gallery has focused on showing and supporting emerging international artists and it presents an exceptional program that unites international positions with a subversive and self-reflexive approach to art making considering the complexity of human coexistence. The gallery often stages the first shows of upcoming international artists in Germany. The program is developing a distinct profile with artists like Maryam Hoseini, Yong Xiang Li, and Flaka Haliti, who investigate the sociopolitical conditions of queer identity and gender, and share a diasporic experience in their works. Beyond its international focus, the gallery has been playing an important part in establishing Munich as a prominent destination for contemporary art and its discourses. ...