I will be presenting a specially commissioned new work Burdof the Sorrows at Kilmainham Gaol this Saturday 21st of May. The piece is
featured as part of Future Histories part of ART:2016 the Arts Council's 1916
Programme. It promises to be an historic and culturally significant event, occurring
from dawn to dusk with 16 of Ireland's leading artists responding to this
iconic site of historical importance. I will be performing every hour on the hour from 10 am to 10pm
Curated by Aine Philips and Niamh Murphy
This project explores the embodiment of the Irish nation as
woman, in contradiction to the repression of women's full access to
subject-hood in Irish society, lore and law. In both written and unwritten
laws, in the language, and social and cultural codifications that continue to
produce women's oppression.
Through mythical figures such as Kathleen Ni Houlihan,
Ireland is depicted as woman 'violated' through colonial rule; and her sons
fighting for her honour become martyred. This work represents a melodramatic,
sorrowful figure of woman haunting the Gaol as site of trauma and loss. The
loss is a loss of voice, a lost of subjecthood. Enacting, embodying but
struggling and failing to voice her sorrow. She is dramatic and kitsch, and
contains elements of both pleasure and sadness in her sorrowfulness. After many
haunting visitations a climactic, dramatic and hysterical outburst rings
through the Gaol. She then returns once again, to her haunting.
