On Losing Meaning
Robotics, petroleum jelly, wax, graphite and pigment, 65 × 90 × 160 cm
A word is set loose in search of its meaning. Encased in pigment and tipped with graphite, a robotic body moves through a confined space, dragging itself across the ground and shedding its original form with every pass. What begins as legible script erodes into mark, then into trace, then into a landscape of its own making.
Shono treats language as a soft material — symbols held in shape only by the social contract that reads them. Once released from that grip, the word becomes a body again: fluid, restless, capable of authoring something other than itself. The performance is one of unlearning, of surrendering rigidity so that new meaning can be born from the gesture of mark-making itself.
The sculptural machine was developed in collaboration with Factum Arte, with engineers Benjamin Panreck and Noah Feehan of the Neurorobotics Research Laboratory at Beuth-Hochschule für Technik, Berlin. Original audio composition Chasing the Sun's Shadow by Orbital Patterns, Quintin Christian, and Rajat Malhotra, produced through soledxb. Mastering by Audioanimals.
Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale
‘Feeling the Stones’, Saudi Arabia, 2021
Curated by Philip Tinari & Wejdan Reda Commissioned by the Diriyah Biennale Foundation
On Losing Meaning was first presented at the inaugural Ad-Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (7 December 2021 – 7 March 2022), the first biennale to be staged in Saudi Arabia, where the work began its slow undoing inside the exhibition hall — a body searching for its meaning as the script it carried dissolved into mark.
Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden
'Nature and State’, Germany, 2022
On Losing Meaning was presented again in the group exhibition Nature and State (9 July – 16 October 2022), where the work continued its quiet undoing — a body still in search of its meaning, still writing itself into the room.
Photos & video: Artur Weber