Shawanda Corbett’s practice involves performance, painting and ceramics. As a woman with a disability, Corbett developed her own bespoke throwing technique using the wheel’s centrifugal force as the counterbalance. Corbett’s interdisciplinary practice addresses the question of what is a complete body, looking at the different cycles of a human’s life through ‘cyborg theory’, developed by the feminist science and technology scholar Donna Haraway in A Cyborg Manifesto (1985). Corbett also creates performances which combine music, dance, prose and poetry. Collaborating with choreographer Albert Corbett, she sets up a live inner dialogue with her surroundings.
A starting point for her ceramics and paintings are childhood memories of the neighbourhood where she grew up. The ceramics explore common tropes from ‘the Hood’: characters that are often invisible or reduced to stereotypes. The desire is to give them a dignity and humanity that they seldom have in mainstream perceptions.
Intimacy and familial bonds are an integral part of the making process. Vessels such as Graveyard Shift work in pairs, where each of them evokes a personality sometimes intended as a stand-in for real people. Corbett listens to jazz to inspire the direction of her artworks. The fluid and colourful surface decorations can be attributed to a performance where the lines and shapes on the vessels visually represent the rhythm of the music.
Let’s play hide-n-seek is a bright and playful painting describing one of the most popular and universal games of childhood. Graveyard Shift, in contrast, explores the bonds within families where working night shifts or long hours can impact work-life balance and wellbeing.
By acquiring Graveyard Shift and Let’s play hide-n-seek, the Harris Museum & Art Gallery intends to explore memory, community and creativity. Corbett’s works in their forms and decoration connect to much of the gallery’s existing historic ceramics collection. When the museum reopens, there will be space given to reflect on the impact of Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement on local communities and to test new ideas and objects for a major redevelopment project that continues to challenge forms of object display. The museum intends for Corbett to perform, in order to showcase the full range of her artistic practice, in the Harris Museum & Art Gallery space.
