Fi Sonola

The Game Master’s Drama It’s my last game at CSM!!! We’re waiting for you guys down at the beach!! Check my story for PLAYTIMES! Come down and meet the artists and projects graduating from MA Fine Art 2025 The Game Master’s Drama is and interactive performance that uses a social deduction game as a vehicle to show us how dysfunctional and destructive relationships can operate during conflict. Fi Sonola views her practice as an interdisciplinary machine, with its primary purpose being this internal rebuilding of identity post trauma, while also understanding how society shapes this identity and, in turn, how that identity goes on to affect society. This autoethnographic approach utilises painting, photography, performance, metalworking, walking practices, installation and theory to achieve this goal. With world-building and theory, Sonola can reflect over and address themes of domestic abuse in mother-daughter relationships, the rebuilding of the post-trauma identity, as well as how we encode in communication. I want to thank my amazing cast @lovethevenusian & @prayerknightleys you’ve been amazing so far!!! As well as my anonymous donor for believing in me & my art by contributing to funding 🩷🩷. My heart is full 😩 @csm_news @fine_art_csm @mafineartcsm CSM Shows: Postgraduate Art. Interval. MA Fine Art Grad Show 2025 ⭐️ Opening Preview: 1 July, 6–9pm (Invite only) 🗓️ Public Dates: 2–6 July 🕑 Opening Hours: Wed–Fri 12–8pm, Sat–Sun 12–6pm 📎 Admission: Free, booking not required 📍 Location: Central Saint Martins, 1 Granary Square, London N1C 4AA #CSM25 #Interval #mafineartcsm #art Images by Belinda Lawley ©

Charmed Steel, aluminium, acrylic and top coat 78cm x 38cm Many thoughts and ideas have bloomed while making this baby. It makes my heart warm🛠️ My life sort of mirrors a dark fantasy anime, so I had to make my protagonist the most fitting special grade cursed tool (iykyk!). Special grade to fight a special grade curse but I’ll leave all of that for another time Rivet. The babe I share a body with. The alter ego 🔧 Some of you met her last month during the Chapter 2 performances and some of you even met her in her beta phase 🥲🫶🏾 She’ll be sticking around, so don’t worry about not meeting her just yet. I do think it’s best to let her be the narrator of her own story. She has her own way of going about things, so I’ll let her handle that. Chapter 2 demo otw 🖤

A closer look at Fi Sonola. 

Fi Sonola built an alternate universe to process this one. Working across painting, sculpture, performance, and photography, Fi’s practice encodes experience, literally. Words, symbols, colour, and typeface become a communication system, a layer of protection around content too vulnerable to expose directly. Her reference points are precise: Stuart Hall, structuralism, manga, the social landscape of Black women in London. And then there’s Rivet, the alter ego who inhabits the constructed world, turning ritual and trauma into something closer to play. The work doesn’t ask you to decode it. But the more you look, the more it gives.
 🔗 Explore Fi’s profile via the link in bio. 
#ContemporaryPainting #ArtDiscovery #ContemporaryArt #ArtistToWatch #EmergingArtist

Material Explorations — Medium as Tool
Artist Workshop at 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning Join us for an informal talk and workshop with Fi Sonola as part of the public programme for TOOLs, a multidisciplinary group exhibition featuring Ella Wanendeya, Fi Sonola, and Kialy Tihngang, curated by Shane Sutherland. Sonola’s practice functions as an interdisciplinary system for rebuilding identity post-trauma, working across painting, sculpture and performance. Through encoded language, symbolism and material experimentation, her work navigates memory, protection and communication. This session will explore material as a tool — considering how process, texture and form can be used to hold and translate complex experiences. Moving between discussion and tactile engagement, the workshop invites participants to think through material as both method and meaning. Workshop Details: 11th April
 1:00 PM Attendance is free with limited capacity via link in bio. Part of the public programme for TOOLS
Exhibition continues until 12 April 2026

Clear Bind 54cm x 53cm x 5.8cm Cast Acrylic The keystone for Marooning Precedes Mutiny : Part B

Frosty Woods 54cm x 54cm x 5.2cm Cast acrylic The keystone for Marooning Precedes Mutiny Part A : Justice is a fuzzy thing, I didn’t find it particularly freeing. It was an expansion pack promising me more pain and humiliation. Before my journey into the woods, I was just finishing up my 3 year stage production as the school whore or ‘sket’ if we’re being colloquial. The first sexual violation of many in this period got me casted in the role on the same day…That was the start of my own hypervisible invisibility. I was familiar with sexual violence but this arena was different… I’ll leave the rest for later

Join us for the opening of TOOLs, a multidisciplinary group exhibition featuring Ella Wanendeya, Fi Sonola, and Kialy Tihngang, curated by Shane Sutherland. TOOLs explores objects beyond utility — reimagined as extensions of the body, carriers of memory, and sites of resistance. Across sound, performance, sculpture, moving image, and installation, the exhibition considers how tools can disrupt imposed narratives and imagine alternate temporalities. Private View: Thursday 19 February, 6–9pm (Free and open to all) Exhibition Dates: 20 February – 12 April 2026 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning Railton Road, SE24 0JT Artistic Programme supported by Arts Council England

Profection year 7 has been interesting already…well I’m strapped in and ready to go

Feral Horses: The Saga 4 poems that encapsulate the saga so far. I loved being able to share them last night with @silenciosolutions @basta.magazine Prologue, 2025 Vol 1 : A Pyrrhic Victory, 2023 Vol 2: Marooning Precedes Mutiny Part A, 2025 Vol 2: Marooning Precedes Mutiny Part B, 2025 4 stainless steel cards 9.5 cm x 15.5cm 340g each Set 1.3kg This isn’t a paid partnership lol. Just can’t remove music 🤷🏾‍♀️

I’ll be reading some work at the end of the month 💗 Silencio Solutions London Curated by @maisonmartinmayorga in collaboration with @basta.magazine Readings by Anna de Waal, Arcadia Molinas Argimon, Fi Sonola, Lydia McKimm, Lu Rose Cunningham, Maria Kirsch, Ozziline Mercedes, Mónica Armario, and Sophie Ruigrok @des.bains , 20 Great Portland Street, W1W 8QR Saturday 29th November 18:00 -21:00

The Captain’s Belt 93cm x 6cm Stainless steel and aluminium Cobra buckle 702 grams (I weigh every baby) The Captain’s Hat The hat is made by @brian_of_holcombe 💖. I then added some stainless steel lettering to the girl. I and Rivet (the steel Queen) made an agreement that she would return on Halloween. She’s been sailing her ship, on a journey that we’ll get into next year. It’s been so long since I shared my body with her. To be honest, she would appreciate me giving our body some rest (lol sorry girl). When you consistently perform as a character, you share a body; If you’re exhausted before your switch, your character is also exhausted. Since the character isn’t the cause for the exhaustion, they’re bound to feel away about coming to consciousness in a tired body. This is one angle of performing that I think about in the run-up to any performance since it determines how Rivet behaves. Well, The Steel Queen wanted to update you on her look before she builds on it again…who knows what she’ll add to it. Ogun awo, Olumaki, alase a juba. Ogun ni jo ti ma lana lati ode. Ogun onire, onile kangun-dangun ode Orun, egbe l’ehin, Pa san bo pon ao lana to. Imo kimo ‘bora, egbe lehin a nle a benge ologbe. Ase. ❤️‍🔥👩🏾‍🏭

Charmed is paying @vamuseum a visit for their Friday Late, ‘Let’s All Have Some Cake’ on 31 October at V&A South Kensington. Co-curated with @riposte.london ! See ya there 💛