Shantell Martin is a visual artist best known for her large scale, black-and-white drawings. She performs many of her drawings for a live audience. Born in Thamesmead, London, Martin lives and works in New York. Along with exhibitions and commission for museums and galleries, Martin frequently works on international commercial projects, both private and public.
Early years and education
Shantell Martin was born in East London and studied at Bexleyheath School in Kent, London. After a year at Camberwell College of Arts, Martin was admitted to Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design in London, England. She graduated with honors in 2003. After graduation, she lived in Japan where she first experimented with live performance art as a visual jockey. From 2006 to 2009, Martin developed her drawing skills through “liveography”—the process of projecting live drawings to sound, music or other experience. She performed at music concerts, design festivals and in public spaces internationally.
Career
In 2008, Martin moved to New York. This period marked the next phase of her career, where she began to focus primarily on physical drawing. Her first solo exhibition, Continuous Line, was held at Black and White Gallery in Williamsburg, New York, and, her first solo museum show ARE YOU YOU opened at The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts in Brooklyn. This was followed by Black and White, a collaboration in embroidery with her grandmother, featured as a part of the Brooklyn Museum group show, Crossing Brooklyn: Art from Bushwick, Bed-Stuy, and Beyond, in 2015. In New York City, she has exhibited at Studio 301, Milk Gallery, Museum of the Moving Image, and 3 Howard Street. She has also exhibited at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. She staged a live drawing installation at the Museum of Modern Art in New York for a private event. Martin has had residencies at 92nd Street Y's Milton J. Weill Art Gallery, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, Summit Series in Utah, Clark College in Washington, and Autodesk in San Francisco. Since 2013, Martin is an adjunct assistant professor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She teaches the course, "Drawing on Everything." Martin was previously a visiting scholar and research affiliate at MIT Media Lab, Social Computing group. She is a 2018-2019 advisory board member for the Climate Museum in New York and an ambassador for the Global Poverty Project. In 2014, she participated in Sundance Institute'sNew Frontier. She is also a fellow at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia University. In addition to contributing to a body of work, Martin is a public figure. In 2012, her Bedford-Stuyvesant bedroom and artwork were featured in the New York Times' Home and Garden Section. Her personal style has been documented in Vogue Magazine, and the New Yorker Magazine created on a short video on her creative process in 2014, called Follow the Pen. In 2019, Martin was featured in an exhibition at the Denver Art Museum, which featured her iconic black-and-white drawings on the museum's walls, floors, and ceilings all over the building. The exhibition explores the concepts of intersectionality, identity, and play. Martin's drawings in the museum will be swapped in and out throughout the length of the exhibition, making it fluid and different on each visit.
Collaborations
In 2016, Martin collaborated with Kendrick Lamar for a 75-minute performance at Art Basel in Miami. She worked with Puma for three separate collaborations, PUMA x SHANTELL MARTIN. In 2018, for her third collaboration, Puma stage a pop-up on Canal Street in New York City. She has also collaborated with Tiffany & Co., Vespa, and 1800 Tequila, as part of the tequila company's Essential Artists series. For Kelly Wearstler, she created a mural for the Melrose Avenue boutique and a line of clothing and furniture.
Commissions
Martin has a current commission in the lobby of the New York City Ballet as part of their annual Art Series. and a permanent mural for and Young & Rubicam's Manhattan headquarters.
Publications
WAVE: A Journey Through the Sea of Imagination for the Adventurous Colorist, was published by TarcherPerigee, as a nine-foot long coloring book with the artist's black-and-white line drawings. The book was created from a series of micro-detailed drawings in a series of 27 notebooks.
