Krebs

Fiona Shaughnessy

2026

The ancient Greek physicist Hippocrates used the Greek word for crab, karkinos, to describe malignant tumors in the body because their shape reminded him of a crab’s limbs. This is why in some modern languages such as German, the word for cancer and crab are still one and the same - Krebs. Having witnessed her father pass away in his early 60’s after an extended battle with cancer, Shaughnessy observed how ephemeral the body truly is, and how quickly it can turn into a so-called “battleground” between medical treatment and illness. She began to ruminate on the vulnerability of the human body to illness, disease, and pain, and the false human tendency to think of ourselves as infinite. The result was a series of sculptures and oil paintings that are both disturbing and captivating, as bodies mutate, spikes pierce skin, and a crab claw emerges from a chest. Each sculpture was hand-built using a combination of imagination and anatomical references to allow for an intuitive workflow. They are treated with terra sigillata, resulting in a luminous, skin-like surface that displays the red clay in its natural, vulnerable-yet powerful state. The clarity of the surface leaves the eye free to focus on the shifting forms of each piece. The emergence of the crab in this work creates a connection to cancer and Shaughnessy’s father, who was a marine biologist. The crab’s disproportionate strength and existence on Earth for hundreds of thousands of years make them a link to the power and ceaseless nature of disease. Despite their timeless connection to life on Earth, their appearance and life cycle is extremely alien.

Fiona Shaughnessy is a ceramicist and oil painter from Northern California. She uses her own experiences and identity to explore themes relating to the human condition such as anthropocentrism, nostalgia, femininity, and mortality. Having studied the human form through live figure drawing sessions since she was twelve, the use of the female figure is prominent in her sculptures as a vessel of empathy and relatability to the viewer, and a representation of the artist in the work. In Spring of 2025 she spent two months in Berlin as an artist in residence at Zentrum für Keramik followed by a month in Finland as an artist in residence at Hub Feenix. This past fall Shaughnessy moved to Portland, where she continued this body of work during her residency at Chehalem Cultural Center. The works on display in this show are those produced during these residencies. She hand-builds ceramic renditions of figures whose anatomy has been altered or exposed in discomforting ways using coil and pinch techniques.. Ceramic, like the body, is fragile. However, her sculptures reject fragility through their assertive size and heft, as well as the monolithic confidence and simultaneous sensitivity reflected through the poses and expressions of each being. Meanwhile the figures in her paintings reflect a haunted, floating, ethereality. Shaughnessy’s work reminds the viewer to remain grounded in the body in pain, and value the body in health.