Bones Tan Jones (they/fae/dia) is a “visual artist, musical composter, and daoist witch”, she also runs the Orakle Apothecary workshops and hosts Shadows Fight Club classes for self-defence
A self-described “queer heretic” – Bones Tan Jones is reshaping the cultural landscape using modern mysticism and eco-conscious artistry in an increasingly digitised world. Raised in a church choir in the northwest of the UK, on the borderlands of mythical Wales and enchanted England, Tan Jones’ work has ne’er strayed far from the ecclesiastic rituals of worship – only in their world, the church has been burnt, the yew trees thrive in the ashes, and god has always been Trans(formational).
Bones presents their living praxis ‘optimystic dystopia’ as a spiritual way of life. An eternal storyteller, alternative realities are explored through alter-egos, with retellings of ancient Chinese and Celtic mythologies through symphonies of psalms, triptychs, sigils, stele, charms, amulets, installations, interventions, and inter-active workshops.
Their Chinese-British lineage deeply informs their connection to earth-based practices and ancestral magick. They often describe their creative process as a fusion of futurism and folklore: techno-paganism meets ceremonial storytelling. Trained at Central Saint Martins, Bones’ practice moves fluidly between mediums: performance, music, sculpture, video, and costume design. But at the heart of it all is ritual – sacred acts performed to heal, reveal, resist, and reclaim.
Eco-Cyborg Cult(ure)s
Bones Tan Jones is best known for turning performance into protest, and protest into poetry. Their 2019 presence during a Gucci fashion show, where they silently held up a hand-painted banner reading “Mental health is not fashion”, went viral. The act was a response to the brand’s use of straitjacket-inspired outfits, and it exemplified Bones’ unique ability to blend confrontation with care. Their work often explores the commodification of spirituality, the climate crisis, and the decolonisation of identity. Through these symbolic gestures, they offer audiences something more than spectacle – participation in a living mythos.
In 2022, the Tunnel Visions exhibition charted Bones’ 6-day pilgrimage from Silvertown Tunnel to Stonehenge; exploring ancient ley lines, the threat of pollution and the onslaught of urbanisation. The centrepiece was a four-metre-high, central monolith crafted from clay, electrical cabling and tree-climbing rope inspired by a 2,500-year-old Anckerwycke Yew tree that Tan Jones encountered on her travels.
“Tunnel Visions is a site-specific exhibition shining a light on the unnecessary tunnels being built at Silvertown / Greenwich and Stonehenge. The Silvertown tunnel being drilled underneath Queercircle from Greenwich to Newham – two of the UK’s most polluted boroughs – will create more traffic and more pollution in places where children’s lungs are already smaller than the lung sizes of children in more affluent areas. The tunnel under Stonehenge would do the same, not only that but it is desecrating a sacred site [the UK government plans to build a two-mile tunnel close to the ancient site though this is yet to be finalised]. It’s not just the stones that hold power, but the land around the stones that are (no longer) sacred too. Though the work is not directly about fracking, it’s important that we see these tools of destruction as connected and recognise the impact they have on the health of humans and the Earth… On day three I wanted to camp at an Iron Age long barrow in Chobham Common. I was turned away multiple times by security guards ‘protecting’ private land. When I finally reached it I discovered the Long Narrow, an ancient burial mound, had been turned into an ESSO gas pipeline. Above it ran electricity pylons and the crackle of the electricity was so loud I could hear it through the bird song.”
Building on their ongoing Daoist and Qi Gong practice – and its involvement with paganism, land-based practices, and world building – Bones Tan Jones advocates for energy cultivation techniques that nurture the energy centres in our bodies. These mind-body modalities are believed to work by activating the parasympathetic system (involved in “rest and digest”), enhancing emotional regulation through interoception, stimulating the vagus nerve through breathwork, and improving joint mobility, circulation, and lymphatic flow through gentle movement.
In many ways, Bones is a bridge between worlds: ancient and futuristic, digital and organic, human and more-than-human. They frequently embody hybrid identities – cyborgs, witches, ghosts – as both metaphor and medium, showing us how our fragmented identities can become sites of disruption over dissonance. In works like Traces of the Future (a performance held within a sacred cave in Mallorca) or their explorations of artificial intelligence and post-human bodies, Bones constructs spiritual systems that are both adaptive and anarchic; Their “altars” might be made of found plastics, their “familiars” may emerge from code.
Mythical Melodies
As a musician, Bones’ work leans more toward the ethereal, with chant-like vocals, spell-poems, and soundscapes meant for invocation rather than consumption; carrying messages of growth, eco-psychology, and self-possession. Bones Tan Jones represents a new archetype of the witch – not just a figure of folklore, but an artist-alchemist using every tool at their disposal to challenge systems of oppression and awaken the sacred within the everyday. Their work suggests that witchcraft is not just about spells and symbols, but radical imagination.
“I’ve never not wanted to be an artist. My secondary school art teacher told me it’s the only profession she thought she could see me doing. I am not sure I see it as a job or profession as I tend to see it more as a spiritual practice, and like all practices, it takes work, dedication, love and commitment. I studied sculpture (at CSM), and although the work I create expands through many mediums, I still think of all my art-making as sculpture. We can sculpt sound, sculpt space and sculpt feelings.”
Bones’ solo musical work draws from: ambient and drone soundscapes; experimental pop and post-punk textures, field recordings of nature, breath, and movement; and lyrics that reference land rights, identity, ancestry, and queer ecologies. While known earlier as a member of the grungy feminist punk band Skinny Girl Diet, their solo work is more ethereal, mythic, introspective and meditative – less about rebellion through uproar, and more about re-centering through resonance. Gender and fluidity are celebrated as divine not deviant, and the embedded activism turns protest into prayer, with a nod towards pre-colonial spirituality, and matriarchal mythos. As a witch, performer, activist, and futurist, they invite us to ask deeper questions about how we live, how we create, and what we choose to worship. In their universe, the spell is the message, and the magic is real.
