Siân Bowen has developed drawing-centred projects in transient architectural spaces, archaeological sites, herbaria and museums, across Europe and Asia. Her works also include video pieces, cast and woven objects, and artist’s books.

 

Ongoing interests are in the boundaries between damage and the creative impulse; light and the drawn surface; the potential that drawing has to interrogate materiality and states of flux, and the multi-sensory nature of museum heritage. Her current works engage with concerns regarding the vulnerability and sustainability of plant life and of the natural world.

 

Recent invitations and collaborations include: Giardini e virtù medicinali, Biblioteca Marciana, Venice (2023); Japanese Aesthetics of Recycling (2023), Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London, and The Awe of the Arctic, New York City Library, Special Collections (2024). As Resident Artist and Visiting Researcher, Economic Botany Collection, Kew Botanic Gardens, she is dedicating traditional methods and materials of Kew’s historical paper and lacquer Japanese collections, to new ends. A three-month visit to Japan to work with specialist makers (Sasakawa and Daiwa Foundations) will inform a body artworks which will be shown in Japan and the UK, 2026-27.