Shanna Strauss is a Tanzanian-American-Canadian mixed media artist and printmaker. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the California College of Arts and has exhibited in solo and group shows in Tanzania, Canada, the U.S and Senegal. Recently her work was shown in Here We Are Here: Black Canadian Contemporary Art at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, The Black Woman is God: Divine Revolution at SomArts in San Francisco and When She Rises at SPARC Gallery in Los Angeles. Last year, she was one of 9 women artists invited to participate in Unceded Voices Anti-Colonial Street Artists Convergence in Montreal. Her work has been featured in documentaries and several publications, including CBC Arts, M – Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Magazine and Americana Journal.
In conjunction with her art practice, Shanna has engaged in community work and organizing for over 10 years, working with diverse youth groups in different countries. In 2014, she completed a Master of Social Work degree at McGill University with a focus on International and Community Development. Integrating arts-based programs and interventions in her community work, Shanna believes passionately in the power of art to create individual, community and social change. She currently lives and works in Oakland, California/Huchiun, unceded Ohlone territory.
“I have come to accept that I belong to many places but also no one place. I’m not rooted in any particular place but rather live in-between many places and spaces. That is what much of my work focuses on, why I am interested in identity and belonging and the in-between nature of diaspora – Diaspora as a site where multiple histories, geographies, and identities exist.”
Shanna Strauss
