Victoria Cantons

Victoria Cantons (b. 1969, London, UK) is a conceptual visual artist working in London, UK. Cantons’s artistic practice is varied and presented across multiple mediums including painting, neon, poetry, text, performance, photographs, and videos, connecting and disconnecting psychological boundaries in the relationships we have with ourselves and others.

Her work is autobiographical and confessional with political undercurrents. Raised in a multicultural and multireligious home by European immigrant parents—her mother from Spain and Catholic, her father French-Algerian, born to Russian Jewish and Basque parents—Cantons has memories of being different from the outset. Her ongoing journey of self-acceptance, declaration, and celebration has been marked by mental anguish, trauma, and scars. This influence is evident in her works, with text inscribed on the surface of paintings and reflected in the language used to title them.

Cantons’ paintings explore the intersection of abstraction and figuration. She creates highly naturalistic figurative canvases, often using photographic images, alongside expressionistic canvases that incorporate abstraction, expressive drips, and gestural, calligraphic line-work into lyrical ruminations. Drawing from a large image archive, her paintings reference family members, self-portraits, flowers, and objects, often inscribing quoted text from diverse sources. Cantons also incorporates ideas of femininity and gender in her work, informed by her experiences as a gay and transgender woman.

Highlights of recent exhibitions include There Are Other Skies, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA), Arizona (2025, group); Art Icon 2025, Phillips & Whitechapel Gallery, London (2025, fundraiser); Present Tense, Hauser & Wirth (2024, group); If Only, Time Were Ours To Spend, Again, Kunstverein Dresden (2023, solo); What Birds Plunge Through Is Not The Intimate Space, Guts Gallery (2023, solo); Nothing is Absolute, Flowers Gallery, London (2023, solo).

Upcoming exhibitions include A Guide For How To Remove Steps From Thought To Action, Niru Ratman Gallery, London (2025, solo); Queer Britain, London (2025, group); Build it, Beat it, Christie’s London (2025, group fundraiser); and Mimosa House (2026, solo).