shanina dionna is a West Philadelphia–based interdisciplinary artist, community arts educator, certified Person-Centered Expressive Arts facilitator, and Provisional Registered Art Therapist. Her practice bridges visual art, somatic inquiry, storytelling, and community-centered care. Working across earth-based painting, murals, movement, installation, photography, and film, she creates immersive experiences that position art as both aesthetic expression and social medicine.
Rooted in personal and collective narratives of mental health, identity, ancestry, healing, and resilience, shanina’s work asks what helps people belong and be well. Her practice moves between the studio, public space, and healing-centered facilitation - cultivating an ecology of care in which beauty, ritual, cultural memory, and emotional awareness converge. She centers communities navigating systemic barriers and uses art to support self-discovery, regulation, connection, and communal wellness.
Her collaborators include the Barnes Foundation, Penn Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services, Philadelphia System of Care, Moore College of Art & Design, the University of Southern California, LIFEWTR, and the Office of Senator Sharif Street. Her work is permanently installed at The Colored Girls Museum, marking her first museum acquisition, and has been presented at Urban Art Gallery, Icebox Project Space, Vox Populi, Philly PACK, Fashion District Philadelphia, and the National Liberty Museum.
In 2016, shanina founded ARTbuds Philly, a tuition-free youth arts program housed at Urban Art Gallery. She received the inaugural Dean Collection 20 St(art)ups grant, presented by Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz to 20 artists worldwide, in 2018; was named a Mural Arts Philadelphia Black Artist Fellow in 2023; and received the Leeway Transformation Award in 2025. That same year, she was selected as the inaugural Artist-in-Residence at the Paul Robeson House & Museum through the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation.
Recognized by Philadelphia Magazine for creating “a positive space for mental health conversations,” shanina is a Temple University alum and earned her master’s degree in Art Therapy & Counseling from Drexel University in 2026.
“Art helped save my life. I simply desire to pay that forward.”
- shanina dionna
Photography, Sarah Alderman.