Shona Macnaughton (she/her) is an artist based in Glasgow. She embodies various state, institutional and labour structures as performance. The work focuses on how political processes are enforced with language and design, exploring histories of free marketisation and individualisation as enacted by neoliberal aesthetics- on work, public space, healthcare, housing, and art institutions. 

Shona has performed and exhibited nationally and internationally in art galleries, theatres, public space and across online platforms. Working by commission or independently she has responded to various site(s) by researching changes in language associated with that architecture. Texts encountered in this process form the basis of scripts performed by the artist and involve participation from the audience. Documentation from the performances have formed publications, moving image and installation works.

Shona completed her MFA at Edinburgh College of Art in 2009. From 2011–2017 she was part of the collective Eastern Surf, exhibiting and performing internationally with a focus on digital technology and processes of gentrification. From 2009–2011 she was co-director of artist-run Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh.

Selected previous projects include: Here To Deliver, performed internationally, commissioned by Edinburgh University’s Contemporary Art Collection 2020; Progressive, solo presentation at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh as part of NOW 6, 2019; Mandatory Reconsideration, Parse Journal, Gothenburg, Sweden 2019; We Nurture, Collective, Edinburgh 2018-19; The Universal School Girl, Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh and Jerwood Space, London, 2016. Her work is part of Edinburgh University’s Contemporary Art Collection. Residencies include: An Exchange of Method, Collective and Artlink, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2017; Cabinet Interventions, National Trust for Scotland and Glasgow School of Art, Pollok House, Glasgow, 2017. Recent writing and interviews included in Performance in a Pandemic, Routledge, UK, 2021; Platform Journal of Performing Art, Royal Holloway College, London, UK, 2020 ; Art Without Space, Oaza Books, Zagreb, 2020; Revista MESA Art_Care, Rio de Janeiro, 2018. Her first book ‘Here to Deliver’ was published in 2022 by University of Edinburgh Art Collection.