I am a multidisciplinary artist based between Dublin and Wexford. I recently graduated from the National College of Art and Design where I studied Fine Art Print with Critical Cultures. My practice explores how cultural and social influences have shaped how women are viewed within society. Through studying historical narratives surrounding female figures, I recognise the endurance of traditional prescriptions of femininity. My graduate project, 'Act 2, Scene 21: In the Garden You Were Made From Me', examines the long-standing negative effect that the biblical story of Adam and Eve has had on the treatment of women in modern society. Working across the mediums of performance-to-camera, photography, costuming and installation, I dispute Christianity’s dictation of traditional gender stereotypes by reimagining this narrative through a feminist lens. Reflecting on the intersection of patriarchal frameworks with lived experiences of women, I challenge how female-centred stories have been moulded to fit strict heteronormative structures. Through the capturing of poses inspired by classical depictions of Adam and Eve in art, I subvert this story by utilising gender reversal. By juxtaposing my contemporary gender-reversed imagery against its historical counterparts, I question the present, investigating how far society has come in dismantling conventional gender stereotypes and reaching gender equality. The modern-day theatre and its accompanying iconography emerge as intrinsically important to my work. The camp sensibilities employed within this setting inherently relate to the act of performing gender. In exploring gender as performance, the theatre serves as a place that permits the transformation of bodies and the traversing of the gender binary. These fresh formations which see I, the artist, become a performer, strive to disrupt the overarching notion of gender as fixed or dictated. Instead, it introduces an understanding of gender as a spectrum, with gender identity being shaped by social forces and personal experiences.
