There is a certain sense of ownership inherent in the gaze. What we look at comes under the control of our senses, and in turn (one hopes) our knowledge. If only for a moment, what we look at belongs to us. This tension lies in all acts of seeing. This tension is what makes the act of voyeurism so unsettling. This tension is present in all artforms, and is at times played into - it is often what is so exciting about photographs, particularly of people. The portrait can offer us another human being to gaze at as long as we want, a person who must submit to our gaze. Great attention is given to those images that appear to refuse or challenge our gaze - think of Manet’s Olympia or Gerhard Richter’s Betty or Wolfgang Tillmans’ portrait of Frank Ocean. Part of what makes these images so engaging is that there is a part of them that refuses to submit, refuses to be owned. Eduard Manet, Olympia, Oil on canvas, 1863 Gerhard Richter, Betty, Oil on canvas, 1988. Wolfgang Tillmans, Frank in the Shower, Digital Print, 2015. This relationship between viewing and ownership, or power, as seen in photography, in painting, in everyday interactions, is a subtle one. It is easy to go through life looking and not consciously think about the power dynamics of looking. But what about when the instrument of looking is thoroughly caught up in systems of actively oppressive power? Harder to ignore, right? It would appear not. Drone technology has swept through the fields of photography, videography, art and advertising, and the drone’s eye view is ubiquitous in the modern age. Drone technology (or UAVs, meaning Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) originated in the first world war, but the technology we have today is most closely associated with the American war in Afghanistan, and conflicts across the Middle East. These modern drones are mounted with cameras, and often used for surveillance and reconnaissance, but are frequently also armed with bombs. Many drone strikes are carried out based on questionable intel regarding the locations of supposed terrorists. The use of drone strikes in these conflicts has often led to high levels of civilian deaths, something which is partly attributed to the vast distance between the soldiers initiating the attack, and the locations being aimed at. Soldiers operating drones are contained within “pods”, completely isolated from any semblance of the physical world of people and things. The operation of drones from such spaces has been compared with playing video games (1). For these reasons, the value of life on the other end of the drone can be hard to conceive of or focus on. Soldiers operating the “MQ9-Reaper” drone, from RAF base in Waddington, England. As is often the case with military technology, drone tech has migrated into the everyday life of civilians, most notably in the realms of image capturing. Drones are everywhere now, or rather, the drone’s eye view is everywhere. In visual culture, the drone is firmly embedded in the vocabulary of film and television, as well as journalism and advertising. A quick YouTube search of the term “drone footage” brings up a fairly even mix of expansive rural and urban landscapes, and reportage on the current war in the Ukraine. Advertising relies heavily on drone footage to lend products a sense of style, but also authority. Media company Canny Creative states on their website that “aerial footage provides scope, giving the viewer a…good idea of just how important whatever you’re shooting is”. Implicit in this statement is the idea that seeing is knowing, and that those who hold the keys to such vision are important. Canny Creative assert that “drone footage is a quality check”, and that in business promo videos “[c]utting to [aerial drone] shots as [individuals are] talking can make even the smallest businesses seem larger than life” Again, the sticky web of vision, knowledge, power, and even quality, are apparent.
The drone’s eye view also has the effect of changing our visual vocabulary, making impossible aerial perspectives part of our everyday visual vernacular. People base travel plans on footage filmed from hundreds of feet in the air - these sweeping shots that capture an entire breathtaking coastline in a matter of seconds, presenting it neatly and smoothly on a screen for our consumption. Such videos are increasingly becoming part of our own mind’s eye, despite the fact that these are not embodied human visions. In this way, the drone acts as an extension of the human body, allowing us to see beyond the limitations of our own eyeballs. We find ourselves in a strange moment where our visual lexicon is being altered by machinic perspectives, perspectives which are intimately entangled with a very real and violent power. Entirely new perspectives and locations are coming under the control of our mind’s visual horizons. The same technology that allows for that is also instrumental in exerting brutal control over often civilian individuals, whose deaths become inconsequential fallout in battles fought many miles away on screens in dark and dingy control rooms. It can be hard to marry these two realities in our minds' eyes when we admire footage of our upcoming holiday destination. And yet it feels increasingly important to hold these two visual realities in tandem. (1): See Mark Brown’s article “Life As A US Drone Operator”, published in The Guardian in 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/28/life-us-drone-operator-artist.
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What started off as a collaboration between the National College and the National Gallery, fell apart when the gallery refused to engage in open dialogue with its community. During the course of the collaboration, it was announced that the Gallery had awarded its three-year cafe contract (worth 7.5 million) to Aramark, an international corporation who provide catering services to three of Ireland's Direct Provision centres [inhumane refugee accommodation], as well as being one of the largest providers of catering to the American Prison system...it was decided that we should pivot our attention to examine the ethical ramifications of this decision. The Gallery then made the decision to step away from the collaboration and the funding allocated for the project was withdrawn. The project went ahead, and 25 postcards were created and distributed for free, with the invitation to post them to the gallery, as a means for the public to express their unease with the institutions behaviour. We must hold our institutions accountable for their actions. We must demand that our institutions recognise their political nature. We must demand that our institutions reflect our community's values. At the very least, we must demand that our institutions be open to dialogue and discourse with their publics. Silence breeds contempt.
https://admodernisms.tumblr.com/
https://admodernisms.tumblr.com/
This online archive is the result of a research project undertaken at the National College of Art and Design. Over the course of 4 weeks, we researched curator Okwui Enwezor's landmark exhibition The Short Century (2001). This exhibition covered the period of 1945 -1994 and explored the connections between African Liberation movements and African Modernism. As our research unfolded, a number of key issues became clear: 1) Modernism in Africa consisted of a multiplicity of styles, subjects, concerns, localities, and timeframes. These variances have often been homogenised within Western discourses, creating the idea of a singular “African” style. 2) Also historically common within Western discourses has been the idea that modernism across Africa is merely an imitation of European or American modernism, rather than a unique set of responses to a unique set of circumstances. 3) Modernist movements in the diaspora, such as Négritude or the Harlem Renaissance are often omitted from histories of modernism in the West. In light of these three key issues, we opted to create a digital archive. Onto this archive we have uploaded artworks by African and diaspora artists and writers, as well as critical texts pertaining to art, literature, and postcolonial theory. The aim of the archive is to present the vastness and multiplicity of African and diasporic modernism(s). From this vastness threads can be pulled, connections made, stories told. The information has been uploaded as it was found during research. It is moderated as little as possible. This archive is not static - it is an ongoing project. We continue to upload content as we come across it in our research, and anyone who accesses the archive is encouraged to submit content to be included. https://admodernisms.tumblr.com/
Alongside the archive we have been pasting content from both the archive and "The Short Century" exhibition catalogue around the city in both Dublin city and Cork city. These interventions in public space aim to bring African and diasporic modernisms into predominantly white spaces, and in doing so re-assert their cultural relevance. It is hoped that each street installation will spark interest and perhaps provide a point of entry into an artist or movement previously unknown (or forgotten) to that person. Alongside each pasted image or piece of text there is a QR code directing people to the archive.
This method of dissemination/ display is acts as the intersection of two important needs or desires: 1) the need for a space that is highly visible to the public and 2) the need for a space that is accessible to all. Another thing to note about this form of presentation is that while we are actively taking the decision to place content on display, we do not decide when it comes down - it potentially stays there indefinitely. We feel that this minimises our role as mediators and moderators. We also encourage the public to download the content from the archive and materialise it by pasting it in public spaces around their own environment. By disseminating the content in this way, these artworks become more accessible to a wider audience. This method also bypasses the constraints of the institutional spaces that have excluded African and Diasporic modernisms for so long (ie, the gallery, the museum, or the university). inter_site’s installation at Queen’s Old Castle utilises the fluid potentiality of liminal space and time to explore the multiplicity of contemporary urban experience, while offering some tentative avenues for change. As evening pulls in, a small crowd gathers before an abandoned Argos in the centre of Cork city. Perched at an intersection, the site hums with multiple flows of urban energy as the city begins its shift from day to night. The May sun slips down the sky, and the air itself is cast a dusty blue. As the day’s heat is released from the concrete, the city gently hums. A stone bench before the shop holds a handful of spectators, more are scattered along the footpath…there is a gentle anticipation as we gather before the shop windows, peering into the depths of an unused space, waiting for it to shift, to become something else. As the city moves into that liminal space that is dusk, the shop windows burst into being with two projected video installations. There is something gratifying about having the eye drawn to a display window that isn’t trying to sell you anything. From behind the rolled down shutters, a sound piece begins to spill out into the street.
* The window to the left shows video works by Padraic Barrett and Aoife Claffey, layered on top of one another. Barrett’s videos are short and visually potent explorations of the tension between the human form and its physical surroundings. In one the figure crawls through a heavy silt landscape, pushing and pulling himself through a meandering path. Each arm reaching forward reads as an attempt to connect, each leg pulled behind, as an attempt to escape. Above the figure is the unnerving presence of a drone, hovering, watching, not allowing the body any escape, any reprieve. In Barrett's work there is the sense of a frantic or desperate return to nature, but it is not a wholly satisfying return. This is no rural idyl - no romanticised vision of the benefits of “nature”, and seems, rather, to highlight the precarious position of the human form in today’s landscapes - be they urban, rural, or something in between. Layered over Barrett’s work are Claffey’s striking shots of urban moments - street lights, cityscapes reflected in water, interior spaces - further solidifying the sense that human and urban may now be inextricably linked. Claffey’s sound piece emanates from behind the shop’s shuttered doorway. In this work, the rhythms of city life are composed into a sound piece which swells and recedes, pulling the body into the ebbs and flows of an urban space. Repeated sonic patterns build, echoing the industrial rhythms of techno, suggesting an inherent order and vitality. Feet begin to tap, passers-by seem momentarily transformed by the beat…but soon the rhythm fades again into a more murky hum of urbanity. The work continues to move between rhythm and reverb, creating a physical tension that feels fitting at this point of burgeoning night. Kate McElroy’s videos run in the second window. The ever growing presence of glass and steel in contemporary Irish cities is interrogated here, in videos that at times layer these structures into shifting, self-referential grid systems, and at other times explore the world as reflected in their impenetrable facades. The videos are, in their own way, quite beautiful - hypnotic ruminations which, in purely formal terms are deeply satisfying. But in their beauty there is an intense sense of disconnect - the very cityscapes in which we live become little more than aesthetic experiences, denying any hope for embodied connection. As night settles fully in around the city, McElroy ducks down under the shutters, and performs a spoken word piece, her words calling eerily out, as though it were the building itself voicing a conflicted rumination on its own value. There is a satisfying conflict between form and content in this work. The disembodied voice maintains a steady, even tone that evokes the automaton, the synthesised. At the same time, McElroy speaks with an unnerving sincerity about the human being lost in contemporary urban structures, both physical and social. * The exhibition oscillates between condemnation and fascinated study, and in this way it elegantly captures the heterogeneity of contemporary urban existence. The works confound any hope for a clear binary, operating instead in liminality. The liminal is the moment between two states, where past, present, and future exist at once, and the multiplicity of the self is at its fullest. It is in these moments of uncertainty, of in-betweenness that we grow. In the ambivalence of liminality, we change who we are, shifting from one state to another. The liminal, then, is a space and time of great potentiality.(1) By activating the abandoned Argos site in this way, inter_site underline the potential of such in-between spaces for interrogation and exploration, and indeed liminality seems central to the work. Each piece operates from a space of uncertainty, where multiple meanings and realities are allowed to emerge and interact. The city scape is at once aestheticised and problematised; the human forms' place in both the natural world and the urban world is troubled; the vitality and the tension of our physical surroundings is held in equal measure. The exhibition draws to a close around midnight, and we are suddenly untethered in the city centre on a Saturday night. In the front of my mind is the notion of a city “coming to life”, and I question the relationship between human and city. The streets hum as they carry a steady stream of people, and I wonder - do they bring life to the streets, or do the streets compel them to life? It seems, perhaps, that it’s both. Exiting the liminal space of the exhibition, it is hard to say what change has occurred. Gaston Bachelard, writing on the metaphorics of space, tells us that “[s]pace that has been seized upon by the imagination cannot remain indifferent space”(2). Perhaps in these works we can see an active seizing of urban space, and a drive to re-imagine, and reclaim our environments from indifference. Notes: (1) For more on the idea of the liminal, see Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (1960), and Victor Turner’s The Ritual Process (1969). (2) Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Boston, 1969 (Introduction). This exhibition was shown as part of Stamp Festival Cork, supported by Cork City Council and Sample-Studios, May 14th and 15th 2022 Recording…
A reflection, caught crystalline in a shop window somewhere on the streets of Manhattan. Caught first from the corner of a passing eye, hooked and pulled by the clarity of a world reflected. The streets intersecting, the buildings creeping skyward, the self in the city. Pulled in by this moment of doubling, she stops, pulls her camera up to chest height, focuses, then looks directly at herself, at the reflected world. The camera is a tool. A means of marking this moment into record. Inconsequential. And yet this record, this moment, is doubled. Troubled. Around, behind, perhaps on top, a second form lurks. A trick of the mirrored surface, or an image double exposed? The buildings behind her are blurred and gentle, rendered with a softness that is forgiving to the human form. The echo of her body aligns her with the city she records, creating an affinity of woman and street. A modern day flâneuse, she records herself within this city, whose streets her feet are warmed by, whose reaching buildings shelter her, whose clamorous din consoles her. In this reflected moment, the city's thrum is pushed outside the frame, but its very absence makes it present. Around her the picture world continues, spreading out in all directions. Dissolving… A cold gaze cast upon herself. The dark eye of the camera echoed in her own blank stare. Her doubled form casts shadows on her face, Looms above her, Suffocates her. A fractured self laid bare before the camera, The truth of an interiority pulled forth into the light and held, fixed in place. A self at once asserted and dissolved, Uncertain edges at once fluid and uncrossable. Inaccessible, Alone, Solo, Reduced to hiding behind the camera, A black box which pulls her through the concrete streets of countless cities, Across countless states. Searching, Seizing, Storing, Hoarding. Greedily capturing the streets before her, Cleaving them in two, doubling them too, Making them complicit in her multiplicity. A cold woman, A spinster no doubt. Abused, Damaged, Unloved, Alone. Gripping hands whose urgent fingers manifest dissonance, Camera held against a chest that breathes disquiet. Here is a world pitched into meaninglessness, Excavated of truth through the click of a button, A fading world of subjectivity, Unreal and irrelevant. Inscribing… Imprinted at once into the photographic document, and into the city in which she figures, here stands Vivian Maier. A reflection sought out on a city street, a moment of constructed poise and pose. Shot from below eyeline, Maier’s figure looms slightly, a solid presence, centre frame. The buildings which recede behind her seem to dissolve into the heavens, taking on the ethereal majesty of photography’s idealised New York, hinting at the sprawling modern utopia which extends outside the frame. Cut off below the waist, Maier aligns herself with these buildings, their blurred shapes echoing the softness of her own organic form. In this echo - woman and city converse, and woman imprints herself into the brickwork. A powerful aura of selfhood emanates from the camera outward - circling Maier’s form with a second self… A self created by the click of the shutter, and etched into the street around her. Her looming ghost elides the photographic world with the solid woman who took the photo; it is an apparition which affirms the relationship between the pictured and the act of picturing, the interior and the exterior, the historical past and the enduring self. What Happens When We Sing?
* Liminal voice in liminal space: a look at Tadhg Ó Cuirrín’s karaoke works at FIX 2021 Performance Art Biennale in Belfast. Tadhg O Cuirrín’s I Hear Voices is a participatory artwork which operates through performative voicing. In this work, the artist provides a standard karaoke set-up: microphone, speaker, a wide selection of song choices, and a screen for following the song lyrics. The rest is up to the audience. People are invited, with perhaps some gentle encouragement, to pick a song and give it a go. The artwork is contingent on each individual’s performance, from the moment they emerge from the audience, to the moment they step away from the microphone. Voice is so closely tied to identity, they can at times seem one and the same. Your voice is your vote. Voice your opinion. Speak up for yourself. Speak up for what you believe. It seems we are what we speak. What about what we sing? Perhaps because we use our singing voice less often, there can seem to be a lot at stake when we sing. If we rarely sing, we may not fully recognise the voice that emerges when we do, resulting in a sense of disconnect, or alienation from the self. Or perhaps we know our singing voice quite well - know its qualities, its strengths, its limits. Perhaps we feel most ourselves when we sing, our body and breath most at ease when our voices play in musicality. Yet still, in day to day life, singing is the “other” voice. The secondary voice. Secondary to the speaking voice with which we navigate our relationships, our professions, our daily interactions. It is this voice which we use to negotiate our worlds, and it is with our speaking voices that we most often express our love, our anger, our needs, wants, pain, and joy. If our speech voice is our primary voice, how might our sung voice communicate? What kind of expression or communion takes place when we move into the singing voice in front of others, in, say, a karaoke performance? In karaoke we are not merely performing a song in front of an audience. We are performing ourselves. Stepping into the secondary voice, we create and occupy a space which is at a slight remove from our more regular, speech- voiced self, and from this alternative “acoustic spatiality”, we enact an identity. The in-between space of the performed voice is compounded in karaoke performance, where we often re-enact the identities of previous performers. Rob Drew, in his ethnographic study of karaoke culture, notes that “[p]eople use songs in karaoke to define themselves and influence others”, drawing on the lyrics and personae of famous artists to project or suggest a certain image of themselves. Drew also states that in karaoke “[v]ocal competence can come to mandate a performer’s temporary sense of self” and so “You monitor your own performance, wavering “in that liminal, double-negative field where [performers] are neither themselves nor their roles” emphasis added). Two speakers are suspended in the middle of the gallery. The rough, dissonant sounds of a band mid-rehearsal fill the space - Michelle Doyle/Rising Damp’s sound piece recording-20210818-204832. There is a count in - a distant “1, 2, 3, 4”, and the clack of drumsticks. Sounds build as instruments gradually enter the foray… There is an abrupt halt - “I’m sorry, I forgot my part, let’s start again, sorry!” Once more, the music builds, voice over bass over drums. Again, it comes apart, composition falling into nervous laughter and awkward jokes. I turn away from the speakers, thinking I’d give the musicians some time to figure it out.
Directly behind me hangs Louis LeBrocquy’s tapestry “Army Massing”. My eye moves gently around the tapestry, taking in the mass of simple shapes that evoke the gathering army, and resting now and then on welcome pockets of empty space. Despite the tapestry’s thick border, there is the sense that the army continues ad infinitum, that this is but the advancing arm. All the while rehearsal continues, and the music begins to take form, elements layering into a full and hypnotic sound. Positioned as I am, directly in between the tapestry and the speakers, the two pieces begin to work together. The singer’s voice, a kind of distant yell, weaves itself into the tapestry, meandering between each figure. The steady rhythm punctuates each spear tip, and the crashing symbols emphasise each open space. The deep bass line rumbles beneath the horses hooves as they march. As the music builds around me, the army before me begins to ripple and move, it comes to life, and I am transported back to a time when Cú Chullain was much less of a myth, and the warp spasm much less of a metaphor. Then - the music cuts. It falls apart. We are back, once more, in the rehearsal room. The laughter of a group of musicians fills the gallery, and I am acutely aware of the technological elements of the work - the recorded voice, the electronic instruments, the speakers hanging in the gallery. ‘Tis far from all this Cú Chullain was raised. There is the uncanny sensation of past and present coming together, and in this liminal space, it is unclear where I stand. Such dissonance forces me to wonder what these ancient tales can mean to us now, and whether they really are as far away as we think they are. Mona Hatoum has been a practicing artist since the 1980s, and has been creating installation art since the 1990s.(1) Her installations are widely noted for engaging viewers in visceral and emotive ways. Born in Beirut to Palestinian parents, Hatoum became stranded in England in 1975 when conflict broke out in Lebanon.(2) She has since lived in exile, mostly between London and Berlin, though she travels internationally for various residencies and exhibitions.(3) The following paragraphs will examine the formal juxtapositions within Mona Hatoum’s 2008 piece Undercurrent (Red), as well as the emotional responses that arise from such oppositions. While the juxtapositions within this piece are many - the softness of the chord as opposed to the industrial glass light bulbs, the “traditional” aspect of the woven matt as opposed to the modernity of electricity - the focus of this essay will be on formal contrasts. Focusing on the juxtaposition of the central square’s regular pattern, and the weaving chords which surround it, I will explore the implications of these contrasting forms. Using Rosalind Krauss’s theory of the grid, section one of this essay will focus on visual analysis, and exploring the central grid of the piece. The second section will explore the emotional effects provoked by this juxtaposition, using the writings of Gregory Minissale. The final section will elucidate some of the possible readings of the work which arise from these juxtapositions, and these emotional responses, although it will avoid offering a single clear reading of the work, as much of the strength of this piece lies in its contradictions, and its ambiguity. The central argument is that Hatoum utilises the grid structure only to undermine it, engaging the viewer physically and emotionally, and drawing attention to notions of displacement, othering, and the role of art. On the floor of the gallery lies a mat. It is bright red, its centre an ordered criss-cross of chord woven loosely together, forming a grid. This grid lies flat and solid on the gallery floor, inviting your eyes to relish the uniformity, to pass over each line as it intersects another, following the repetition around the square. In contrast to this rigid square, the fringe of the mat spreads outward in a mass of flowing red lines. Emanating from the grid, these lines twist and braid, becoming entwined in complex looping patterns. They are a dizzying abundance surrounding an organized structure. At the end of each red chord is a 15 watt lightbulb, whose light rises and falls steadily. These lightbulbs rest in a general circle around the piece, fragile guardians of the sumptuous red material within, and the solid gridded square in the centre. In her landmark essay Grids, of 1979, Rosalind Krauss examines the grid as a visual structure synonymous with the modern age, which suggests the rational, the logical, and the universal.(4) The grid is a structure whose ‘order is that of pure relationship’, set ‘a world apart’ from the viewer or subject, rejecting association with the natural world.(5) Thus, the grid ‘declares the space of art to be at once autonomous and autotelic’.(6) Separated from the perils of “reality”, the grid can seem like a space of security, of safety. Krauss describes the grid as it appeared in the early 20th century as a structure into which the contradictions of spirituality in an increasingly secularized world could be absorbed, and covered over. The grid ‘deals with paradox or contradiction not by dissolving the paradox or resolving the contradiction, but by covering them over so that they seem (but only seem) to go away’.(7) Absorbing contrasting ideas and experiences within itself, the grid presents itself as an emblem of certainty and purity; it appears as a space into which one may retreat from the world. The grid declared itself at once to be both pure logic, and pure spirit. And yet this seeming contradiction does not weigh down the grid and it appears again and again, from the abstract painting of the early twentieth century through to the minimalist sculptures of the 1960s, right up to the present day. As a visual structure, it continues to ‘sustain[..] itself...relentlessly.’(8) In the case of Undercurrent, what is relevant is that the grid appears as a structure of pure logic, and the formal interactions which take place within the work serve to undermine this. In Undercurrent , the grid is a square of order amid a mass of weaving lines. It sits immobile, dependable, and speaks to the viewer of certainty, of safety, and of something universal. This certainty, however, is under threat. The grid in Undercurrent is inaccessible, always viewed from a distance, always at an angle. Approach is made impossible by the guarding light bulbs and the heaving mass of red lines, lines which will surely soon unravel the central square entirely, until the grid is no more. The imminent unravelling of the grid undermines any sense of security which may have been associated with this structure. Contradictions are brought to the fore, and the artwork is tied once more to the phenomenological experience of the viewer. The tension which arises from the juxtaposition of the rigid grid form and the weaving lines surrounding it connects the piece to the concrete, solidifying the viewer’s engagement with the piece, and eliciting a myriad of emotions. The contrasting forms of Undercurrent (Red) engage the viewer in conflicting emotions, ranging from a sense of stability and comfort to feelings of uncertainty, apprehension, and unease. Such emotions arise as a result of the formal elements’ engagement with the viewer’s body, and their sense of the familiar.Tembeck Tamar notes that in many of Hatoum’s pieces, meaning ‘is contingent upon the physical presence of the spectator’,(9) and certainly in Undercurrent, the contrasting formal elements encourage movement around the piece, heightening engagement, and in turn emotional response. The grid of the central square attracts the viewer in its recognisable pattern. As discussed previously, this element is associated with solidity and safety. It is attractive in its familiarity. Yet this square of order is viewed from a distance, the viewer pushed away by a mass of twisting, weaving red cables which emanate from the central square. Instinctively, one may begin to walk around the piece, looking for a way in, an access point to the central square. Circling the piece, the eye follows the lines of the twisting, curling cables, tracing their path to the centre, but losing them in the grid. The light bulbs lie around the outside, protecting the forms within, keeping the viewer from getting too close. Continuing to circle the piece, one soon realises that their breathing has matched the rise and fall of the light from the bulbs.(10) The viewer becomes one with the piece - or perhaps the piece is coming alive. This phenomenological identification with the work heightens all emotional responses which arise. The contrast in forms leads to feelings of, on the one hand security, and on the other uncertainty, doing so by engaging with the viewer’s sense of familiarity and estrangement. Hatoum has stated that although it has been ‘important to use the language of minimalism’ in her work, she also wanted to ‘fill it with signs that refer to the world outside, as opposed to keeping it non-referential’.(11) Undercurrent (Red) acts as what Gregory Minnisale would call a ‘hybrid object’ (12). Such an object is composed of familiar elements, (the ‘signs’ of the ‘world outside,’(13)) combined with the unfamiliar. Minnisalle explains that in such objects, ‘...their familiar details tug at the memory, at partially formed emotions and attachments’, and yet the unfamiliar aspects reject identification, halt the process of memory. In viewing such a piece, ‘our automatic binding processes are somehow halted, fragmented in a series of binocular rivalries’, leading to conflicting emotions that are difficult to resolve (14). In Undercurrent, the central square suggests a mat or carpet, something which is almost universally familiar. Its very form is familiar - the grid is, by now, practically ubiquitous throughout modern visual culture (15), certainly throughout Europe and America. All of this familiarity, however, is undermined by the flowing lines which emanate from it, whose pattern is irregular and unpredictable. The tension between these two elements halts any memory retrieval which the central form may elicit, leaving the viewer in a liminal space of conflicting and in many ways unresolvable emotions. The familiarity of the associated carpet or mat is undermined by the unfamiliar pattern of the surrounding chords. The solid and recognisable grid is undermined by the uncertainty of the mass of red lines around it. Minnisale notes that ‘[t]hese artworks stimulate the retrieval of memories…’ (16), and certainly in Undercurrent there is an attempt to identify with the object, however this process is not fully accommodated, and the conflicting emotions of comfort and discomfort are difficult to resolve. This movement between positive and negative emotions, between the known and the unrecognisable, ultimately serves to undermine the viewer’s sense of identity, leading to emotions of uncertainty and displacement. As the familiarity of the central form is potentially undone, so, too is the sense of self which the viewer has attached to that central form. Minnislae states, of ‘hybrid objects’, that because ‘[s]uch...objects are composite and unresolved; we are unable to classify and constrain them in order for an appropriate or coherent emotional response to be formed’(17). He continues; ‘[t]his is not only the trauma of object identification but also a glimpse of the fragmentation of identity itself’ (18). This incoherence of emotional response undermines the viewer’s emotional integrity, and in turn their selfhood. So why elicit such conflicting, destabilising emotions? Where might such an experience lead the viewer? Undercurrent (Red) is a work that is difficult to ascribe any singular meaning to. It is full of contradictions and variances, and in fact these are its strengths, and are part of its meaning. Hatoum has stated that she creates works in such a way that they ‘can include you and your experience as well as mine’(19), and her works, while they are of course born from her own experiences, are not tied simply to her life, and it would do a disservice to the scope of her work to look at it simply from the point of biography. Undercurrent is a work which ‘reverberates with several meanings and paradoxes and contradictions’(20). Two possible readings will be explored here. Undercurrent can be read as engaging the viewer in a feeling of displacement which mimics the experience of exile. Edward Said’s 2000 essay ‘The Art of Displacement…’ makes clear the connection between her objects which reference the home, such as Undercurrent does, and the experience of exiled Palestinians. In his reading, the sense of uncertainty, as well as the suggestions of memory which cling to the piece, are illustrative of the exile’s experience (21). However it is clear that the feelings of displacement evoked by the work are not particular to those who are exiled from their homeland. This experience of exile is not tied only to Hatoum’s experience, but rather engages with the feeling of displacement and un-belonging which is increasingly common in the modern era (22). The feelings of unease when engaging with Undercurrent are not particular to a single people, but rather there is a common experience of disbelonging. One function of the contrasting forms and emotions, then, may be to make the viewer aware of their own position as a displaced subject in a modern world. As noted above, the contrasting forms and the emotions which arise as a result of engaging with these forms, serve to destabilise concrete conceptions of selfhood. It is, as Tembeck states of Hatoum’s work more broadly, a piece that ‘challenge[s] [the] viewer’s senses of corporeal and ontological autonomy’ (23). From this space of displacement, the viewer is engaged in a questioning of the othering which is so prevalent in our conception of self - there must always be an ‘other’ in contrast to our ‘self’(24). Undercurrent creates an identification with the familiar through its use of the central grid structure and its engagement with the viewer’s body. This familiar space is then injected with the unfamiliar through the juxtaposition with the flowing lines. In this way, the viewer begins to identify with the unfamiliar itself. Tembeck notes that Hatoum’s work poses the question - ‘How can one be afraid of the stranger if the stranger is within?’(25). By evoking a feeling of ‘the other’ within the viewer, Hatoum undermines the hierarchy of self and other, dissolving the power dynamic, and proving it meaningless. Finally, we return to the grid. We have seen what the undermining of the grid means emotionally within the work. But what may it mean conceptually? Marja Sakari notes that ‘[m]inimalism...upheld the modernist notion of artistic ‘purity’, enshrining art as something unsullied by subjective interpretations and external associations’(26). As a central motif of minimalism, the grid continued as a space that was separate from the world of lived experience. In Hatoum’s work, the grid’s assertion that art was above or separate from history and ideology is challenged and dissolved (27). In Undercurrent, artistic practice returns very much to the “real” world - to the concrete, to the lived experience. Through unravelling the grid, and so eliciting emotional responses which are complex and varied, Undercurrent affirms the phenomenological reality of art, and asserts that art matters, that it is political, and human. Hatoum’s Undercurrent works to return the grid to the people, and to re-assert art’s relevance to our world, and our lived experience. The juxtaposing formal elements in Hatoum’s Undercurrent (Red) engage the viewer in conflicting emotions of familiarity and uncertainty, of comfort and unease. Such emotional responses arise from the work’s engagement with the viewer’s body, and the evocation of memory through form. As the weaving lines undermine and unravel the stability of the central grid, feelings of identification and stability are replaced by unease and discomfort. Such conflicting emotions serve to challenge conceptions of self, evoke feelings of displacement, and undermine processes of othering and hierarchies of subjecthood. Finally, the juxtaposition of forms undermines the grid structure and its insistence that art be self referential - pure form, void of contradiction. Undercurrent embraces contradiction, in form, in content, in emotional response, and in meaning. It is a firm assertion that art should be honest, and engage viewers in meaningful experiences. References: 1. L. Haapala, Foreword in C. Van Asche, C. Wallis, Mona Hatoum, Tate Publishing, 2016, 11. 2. C. Wallis, Introduction in Van Asche, 13. 3. Ibid., 15. 4. R. Krauss, ‘Grids’, October, vol. 9, 1979, 51-64. doi:10.2307/778321. [accessed February 12, 2021.] 5. Ibid., 50-51. 6. Ibid., 52. 7. Ibid., 54. 8. Ibid., 50. 9. T. Tembeck, ‘Mona Hatoum's Corporeal Xenology’, Thresholds, vol. 29, 2005, 57–60, p. 58. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43876231. [accessed 23 Feb. 2021.] 10.My thanks to Dr. Mary Kelly (UCC) for sharing their personal experience of Hatoum’s Undercurrent (Red). 11. M. Hatoum quoted in H.G. Masters, ‘Domestic Insecurities’, ArtAsiaPacific, July- August 2008, http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/59/DomesticInsecuritiesMonaHatoum, [accessed 4 March 202] 12. G. Minnisale, The Psychology of Contemporary Art, Cambridge University Press, 2015, 58. 13. M. Hatoum, quoted in H.G Masters. 14. Minnisale, 58. 15. E. Strickland, Minimalism, Origins; Indianapolis, 2000, 1. 16. Minnisale, 58. 17. Ibid., 62. 18. Ibid., 59. 19. M. Hatoum, quoted in F. Guner, ‘No Way Home’, The New Statesman, 16 June 2008, 42-43, p. 43. 20. M. Hatoum, quoted in A. Michael, ‘Interview. Michael Archer in Conversation with Mona Hatoum’, Mona Hatoum, Phaidon, 1997, 8-30, 25. 21. E. W. Said, ‘The Art of Displacement: Mona Hatoum’s Logic of Irreconcilables’ https://www.iemed.org/publicacions/quaderns/15/QM15original/13.pdf [accessed 24 Feb. 2021.] 1-4 22. M. Francis, Foreword in Van Asche, 7. 23. Tembeck, 57. 24. Ibid., 58. 25. Ibid., 57. 26. S. Marja. ‘Boundary Crossings: The Political Postminimalism of Mona Hatoum’, in Van Asche. pp 150 - 168, 151. 27. J. Mansoor, ‘A Spectral Universality: Mona Hatoum's Biopolitics of Abstraction.’ October, vol. 133, 2010, pp. 49–74. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40926716. Accessed 6 Mar. 2021, 53. Bibliography: Ankori, G., Palestinian Art; Reaktion Books, 2006. Antoni, J., and M. Hatoum, ‘Mona Hatoum’, BOMB, no. 63, 1998, 54–61. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40425560. [accessed 12 Feb. 2021.] Batchelor, David; Minimalism; London, 1997. Guner, F., ‘No Way Home’, The New Statesman, 16 June 2008, 42-43. Hatoum, M., McAllister, J., ‘Shifting Ground’, Grand Street, no. 62, 1997, 200–209. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25008231. [accessed 16 Mar. 2021.] Koerner, J. L., Casper David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape; Reaktion Books, 1995. Krauss, R., ‘Grids’, October, vol. 9, 1979, 51-64. doi:10.2307/778321. [accessed February 12, 2021.] Mansoor, J. ‘A Spectral Universality: Mona Hatoum's Biopolitics of Abstraction.’ October, vol. 133, 2010, pp. 49–74. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40926716. [accessed 6 Mar. 2021.] Michael, A., ‘Interview. Michael Archer in Conversation with Mona Hatoum’, Mona Hatoum, Phaidon, 1997, 8-30. Minnisale, G., The Psychology of Contemporary Art; Cambridge University Press, 2015. Potts, A., ‘Installation and Sculpture’, Oxford Art Journal, vol. 24, no. 2, 2001, 5–23. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3600405. [accessed 3 Mar. 2021.] Potts, A., The Sculptural Imagination. Figurative, Modernist, Minimalist, Yale University Press, 2009. Said, E.W., ‘The Art of Displacement: Mona Hatoum’s Logic of Irreconcilables’ https://www.iemed.org/publicacions/quaderns/15/QM15original/13.pdf Strickland, E., Minimalism, Origins; Indianapolis, 2000. Tembeck, T., ‘Mona Hatoum's Corporeal Xenology.’ Thresholds, no. 29, 2005, 57–60. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43876231. [accessed 23 Feb. 2021.] Van Assche, C., Clarrie Wallis; Mona Hatoum; Tate Publishing, 2016. “Was it something I said?!” Considering subject-object relations in Gerhard Richter’s Betty10/24/2022 Gerhard Richter, Betty, 1988, Oil on canvas. Before you sits a girl, her body strangely twisted. One shoulder leans forward while her hips recede. Her head is turned so that she looks behind her, into the world of the painting. The title is Betty. This, then, must be Betty. A soft light falls from above, bathing the top of her head, highlighting golden strands as they twist into a gentle knot at the nape of her neck. Note the detail of each strand, before allowing your eyes to dance along the bright floral pattern of her jumper. It is painted with some of the precision of a photograph, and at first the eye takes it to be one, but looking closer one can see the stretch of canvas underneath and can note the light brushwork. Looking a moment longer, one can see a softness in the rendering that is specific to painting. Her left shoulder is in sharp focus, but the rest of her form seems to soften slightly, the white of her jumper pops, seeming, in places, to glow from within, candescent and alive. Wisps of hair dissolve into a murky background, a background that does not suggest a recognisable space per-se, but a kind of void, into which she is turning... Or perhaps from which she is turning away. Gerhard Richter’s Betty is an oil painting of his daughter, dated 1988, measuring 3.4 x 2 feet. The painting is drawn from a photograph taken in 1978, when his daughter was eleven years old. In Joseph Koerner’s 1990 book, he sets out a mode of examining paintings via reception aesthetics, focusing on Casper David Friedrich’s landscape paintings. Koerner posits that Friedrich’s paintings, through their very composition, place the viewer before them. This sense of being placed is present in Betty also, however where Koerner speaks of the ‘embrace’ of the painting, that is not quite what is happening here. In the same breath that Betty positions the viewer, it also rejects them. The female figure refuses what Laura Mulvey would term ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’. This essay will examine the ways in which Betty both draws the viewer in, and pushes them away, and what this means in terms of subjecthood - both that of the viewer and that of the depicted figure. I will also consider the various ways that this painting challenges general expectations of the art object. Part one will examine, using Koerner’s model, how Betty places the viewer. Part two will use Mulvey’s text to explore the extent to which the painting’s figure remains inaccessible, and the feeling of being excluded from the painting. In the final part, I will discuss the pictorial norms which Richter both employs and subverts, and how this is part of the painting's work of interrogating and subverting pictorial norms. I will use a brief comparison with Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring to do so. In the opening chapter of his book, Koerner illustrates the ways in which certain aspects of Friedrich’s paintings have been rendered in such a way as to place the viewer. In Koerner’s account, the artist, and so the painting, anticipates the viewer, turning the artwork from a passive object, to an active influence. Similar modes of placement are at play in Richter’s Betty. Koerner notes that, in Trees and Bushes in the Snow it is ‘[t]he random signature of each specific twig’ which ‘testifies that the network was and is this way and no other way’ (2). He goes on to state that it is through this specificity ‘that you...are placed here, rather than elsewhere, before this thicket’ (Koerner, 2). In Koerner’s reading, specificity suggests reality outside of the painting, and lends the artwork an importance that demands our attention. Such specificity is clear in Betty also, and is integral to the work of drawing the viewer into dialogue with the painting. The photo-realism with which Betty has been rendered is arresting, and the viewer is pulled in by individual strands of hair, rendered with finesse under a glow of warm light. The eye follows the sweep of the hair, down to the folds of the hood, and down again along the bright flowers on her arms. As the viewer admires the fine detailing of Betty’s jumper and her hair, they realise that they are waiting...waiting for Betty to turn back around to face them, to engage with them. The viewer begins to realise that this will not happen, and they begin to wonder what Betty looks at. What is so captivating that she would turn away from us, forever? Her left shoulder, in all its sharp focus, seems to invite the viewer to stay with her - its clarity speaks to a realness, an of-this-world-ness that begs attention. At the same time, the soft haze which falls over the rest of the body is gentle on the eyes, and invites a certain lack of attention, allowing the eyes to wander softly. The background, empty of objects yet possessing a certain solidity and depth, encourages such gentle, unfocused viewing. It also begs the question - where do Betty’s eyes look? What, in this murky blank behind her, is so captivating? Her seeming disinterest in the viewer leaves us desperately searching for clues, for ways of accessing this private world. Koerner notes that, in Trees and Bushes, ‘the intensity with which it fixes on its motif, and in the way it arrests the viewer by its very focus on the unremarkable, the canvas fashions about itself a humanizing plot’ (7). A focus on the unremarkable awakens in the viewer a desire to place a narrative on what they see. So what might be the ‘humanizing plot’ of Betty? The very title affirms the reality of the figure as an individual, and suggests an entire life of joys, pains, friends, and parents who named her Betty. Perhaps it is one of those parents who draws her attention now, calling her name from another room, causing her to turn her head in response. Perhaps in a moment she will turn back to face us. There is a world “of Betty” which the viewer longs to enter, to know, and the longer one looks at the painting, the more one begins to ache for Betty to turn around. Through such desire, the viewer may turn themselves into the object of Betty’s gaze, thus confusing the subject-object relationship. It is through fine detailing, and the suggestion of a narrative plot that Richter places the viewer in relation to the figure of Betty, drawing them into a speculative enquiry, and thereby highlighting the interplay between viewer and object. There is, however, an element of Betty which rejects the viewer, something which actually helps to solidify distinctions between subject and object.. This rejection takes place in Betty’s pose, and the way in which her face is turned away, hidden from the viewer’s gaze. Laura Mulvey’s seminal text ‘Visual pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ outlines the ways in which the female figure is portrayed in Hollywood cinema, examining what she terms the ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ of women on screen, and the visual pleasure which arises from these portrayals. There are many similarities between the visual languages of cinema, painting, and indeed photography, from which Ricther’s Betty draws, and Mulvey’s writing is useful in understanding the ways in which Betty is able to challenge the view of the male gaze, and reject the notion of female-as-object of visual pleasure. Mulvey points out that ‘women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact’ (366), and yet such impact is decidedly absent from this painting. Mulvey’s model uses the psychoanalytic theories of scopophilia and the “mirror stage” to examine the ways in which women are figured in cinema. Aspects of both of these theories are helpful in understanding how Betty resists the viewer’s gaze. Freud’s concept of scopophilia examines the pleasure which is gained through looking, and he ‘associated scopophilia with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze’ (Mulvey, 363). Scopophilia can, ‘[a]t the extreme...become fixated into a perversion, producing obsessive voyeurs’ (Mulvey, 363).7 This is denied in Betty, as no matter how much the viewer may attempt to control the figure via their gaze, this control is rejected by Betty’s apparent disinterest. She turns away, denying us access to her face, twisting her body beyond recognition. The visual pleasure offered here is benign, and resides in the precise rendering of hair and clothing, as mentioned above. As one dwells before the painting, the contrast between red and white delights the eye as it tries to pick out repetition and difference in the pattern of her jumper. There is pleasure in the act of ‘figuring out’ the creases of her clothing, or the twist of her hair, which seems almost to fold in on itself. It is worth noting that in Mulvey’s reading of cinema, a sense of separation between audience and actors is central to the experience of voyeurism in the audience (363). Here, in Betty, the figure is pressed into the foreground, too close for a sense of voyeurism. Mulvey also ties the concept of erotic spectatorship to Lacan’s theory of the “mirror stage” which outlines the pivotal moment in a child’s development when they recognise themselves in a mirror, and so become aware of their own subjecthood. For Mulvey, this important visual moment of identification and mis-identification is acted out in cinema, and the audience’s ability to see themselves mirrored on screen allows them to play the role of voyeur. Mirroring also allows for a ‘temporary loss of ego’ which is ‘reminiscent of that presubjective moment of image recognition’ that the child has pre-mirror stage (Mulvey, 365). In Betty we are unable to see ourselves in her, to see ourselves mirrored. By denying the viewer the moment of mirroring, the viewer is denied identification and is unable to lose themselves fully in the painting. In this sense, Betty, in her refusal of the viewer’s gaze, actually affirms their subjecthood. By denying the viewer scopophilic and voyeuristic pleasure, the painting dismisses Betty’s to-be-looked-at-ness, while re-affirming the viewer’s position as subject. So why paint a figure that both compels and rejects the viewer? This seeming contradiction is part of the painting’s work to challenge accepted norms of painting, of the art object. Drawing on the visual languages of both painting and photography is another part of that work. As mentioned, this piece is painted from a photograph taken in 1977. For a painter to paint from a photograph is not in itself unusual, however the choice of this image, where the figure has her face turned away, is worth dwelling on. Such a composition is rooted in the vocabulary of photography - the snapshot, the quick click of the shutter. Most anyone who stands before this painting likely has such an image on their phone, camera, or in their drawers at home - the blurred moment, inexpertly caught, a testament to the photographer’s misstep. Surely this is not something worthy of the gallery wall? Worthy of painting, even? So Richter is questioning what it is that we value in an image. By drawing on the vocabulary of photography, Richter is also asking that the viewer read this image in a certain way. Gerry Badger notes how we interpret the world of the photograph ‘in much, but not completely the same way we interpret the world itself’ (7). This parallel between the photo world and the real world plays out in Betty, and is part of what draws us in, is part of what ‘places’ us. On the other hand, the way in which the painting engages with the historical language of painting is part of what rejects the viewer. I will use a brief comparison with Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring to illustrate some of the ways in which Richter’s Betty engages with and rejects the norms of painting, specifically portraiture. Portraiture was a staple of Western art practices from antiquity up until postmodernism, with a pause during the middle ages (Woodall, 2). Joanna Woodall, claims that ‘[t]he desire which lies at the heart of naturalistic portraiture is to overcome separation: to render a subject distant in time, space, spirit, eternally present’ (8). This desire is evident in Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring which, although technically a tronie, draws heavily from norms of portraiture. Here, the artist captures its subject’s face in stunning clarity. The painting features a young woman, her body in profile, turning her head to face the viewer. Light from the left hand side pours over her face, illuminating her milky skin. From her ear hangs a single pearl, glinting in the light. This glint is mirrored by the dewy sheen of lips, which are parted oh so slightly, as though she may be just about to speak, or perhaps even laugh. Her beauty is clear, and is displayed for the viewer’s pleasure. The similarities between Vermeer’s and Richter’s paintings are numerous - the soft yet luminous light, the meticulous rendering of plush fabrics, the dark, blank background...even the pose is similar - a body in profile, with the head twisted to the side. And yet, they are mirrors of each other. Where Vermeer offers the figure’s face for the viewer’s pleasure, Richter denies that pleasure, and denies access to the figure's subjecthood. We can only guess at the expression Betty’s face wears. While there are elements of portraiture in Betty, the main element - the face - is missing, and this confounds any reading of the painting in simple painting terms. It also confuses our relationship with the painting, by rejecting all attempts to read it as a traditional painting, thus undermining its own efforts to engage us through its references to photography. It is exactly within this paradox that the power of Betty lies. The viewer stands before the painting, both attracted and repelled, uncertain how to read the image, frozen in this state for a moment, held - just like Betty herself. Gerhard Richter’s Betty is an intricate to and fro between attraction and rejection. The painting places the viewer by drawing them in with specific and realistic detailing, and by suggesting a narrative plot. It also positions the viewer by engaging in the visual language of photography. We are placed in an intimate and questioning relationship with the figure of Betty, and at the same time, the painting rejects the viewer’s presence by refusing any objectifying or controlling gaze, and refusing any sense of mirroring. The simultaneous attraction and rejection destabilizes the viewer’s role in the transaction that is viewing a painting. This constant pull and push, this undermining of viewer/object roles, plays into the painting's ability to question the nature of the art object, and the role of painting. It is this kind of questioning which leads Robert Storr to describe Richter’s practice as ‘undoing painting in the most masterful way’ (288). By undermining what is expected of a painting, Richter destabilizes the viewer, leaving them to question what it is that they want from a painting or an artwork, and what they are willing to give. Gerhard Richter, Betty, 1988, Oil on canvas. Johannes Vermeer, Girl With a Pearl Earring, 1665, Oil on canvas. Bibliography: Badger, G., The Genius of Photography, How photography has changed our lives, London, 2007. Buchloh, B.H.D., editor, OCTOBER Files, Gerhard Ricther, Massachusetts, 2009. Koerner, J. L., Caspar David Friedrich and The Subject of Landscape, London, 1990. Mulvey, L., ‘Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema’, in Art After Modernism, Rethinking Representation, Boston, 1984. Storr, R., Gerhard Richter, Forty Years of Painting, New York, 2002. Woodall, J., editor, Portraiture, Facing the Subject, Manchester, 1997. Paula Meehan uses a method of deliberate, sustained viewing within her poetry to foreground unacknowledged members of Irish society, and to give voice to the voiceless. Both “The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks” and “My Father Perceived as a Vision of St Francis” engage with an under-represented group in society - women, and the working class respectively - and seek to foreground their lived experiences. In each of these poems this foregrounding hinges on the act of viewing - moments of observation carried out by both the reader and the speaker.
“The Statue of the Virgin” uses the concept of viewing to create a strong sense of female embodiment, and to speak for silenced women in Ireland. Susan Bordo, in her essay “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity” notes how “[t]he body...is a medium of culture”, how it is “a powerful symbolic form, a surface on which the central rules...of a culture are inscribed and thus reinforced…”(90). This is particularly evident in the treatment of the female body in Irish culture. The Irish Constitution of 1937 was a document which “legally inscribed and culturally enforced the nationalist and Catholic ideas of femininity as chaste maternity” (Steele 315). By tying a woman’s role in society to the realm of home and family, in service of the state, the constitution created a reality in which “[t]he images of suffering Mother Ireland and the self-sacrificing Irish mother are difficult to separate” (Meaney 230). Meaney goes on to point out that “[b]oth [images] serve to obliterate the reality of women's lives” (230). In “The Statue”, Meehan works to piece this reality back together, through sustained engagement with one hollow emblem of Irish womanhood - The Virgin Mary. The poem was written in response to the death of fifteen-year-old Ann Lovett after giving birth alone in a grotto in Granard. In her essay “Refusing the Poisoned Chalice: The Secual Politics of Rita Ann Higgins and Paula Meehan”, Karen Steele notes that “[t]he symbolism of a young mother’s death before a statue of the Church’s most revered figure of nurturing maternity stirred the consciousness of the nation” (323), and it is the power of this image which Meehan uses with profound impact in her poem. Meehan builds on the visual potency of this incident in the public consciousness, grounding the statue and the reader in the reality of location, and from here allows the statue to articulate a myriad of frustrations reflective of the restrictive role of women in the Irish state. In the poem the reader inhabits the role of both the Virgin herself and the worshiper who kneels at her feet looking up. The very title of the poem calls attention to the act of viewing - it is not the Virgin at Granard, it is the statue of the Virgin. Statues exist for human viewing, and so the physicality of the statue must be at the forefront of our minds as we read. So, the reader is placed firmly in the grotto, firmly at the feet of the Virgin, as she herself watches over the town, holding “vigil”(26). Her realness as a subject is solidified in the second stanza, where she describes the “howling” wind, which “carries intimations of Garrison towns” (26). She can “hear fish drowning”, and taste the stagnant water mingled/with turf smoke from outlying farms” (26). Repeatedly throughout the poem, the physicality of the Virgin is affirmed as she places herself within the landscape, within the grotto, and the reader is placed there with her. We see the “riot in the hedgerows/ of cow parsley and haw blossom”, or the “hedges heavy with the burden of fruiting/ crab, sloe, berry, hip” (27). And all the while, she is addressing us, there is no space for our reply - it is a diatribe from a statue, cold and beautiful - “pure blue, pure white” (27). The impact of the Virgin’s diatribe hinges on the reader’s image in their mind’s eye of the holy statue. The statue is the female unconvincingly embodied, but when coupled with speech, the image of the Virgin becomes a locus of subversion and critique, of both Church and state. By the close of the poem, having listened to the grim reality of the Virgin’s words, we gaze up at her and see her as more human than before. “My Father Perceived” also relies on an act of extended viewing within the poem, to bring the reader's attention to the working class. That this poem is concerned with more than just Meehan’s father is attested to by Meehan herself, who said in interview that the politics of the family reflect the politics of the wider community in which it finds itself, stating that “The authoritarian roles in the family, the subservient roles in the family, happen in collusion with the bigger institutions” (Meehan, Close to the Next, 27). While Meehan has stated that one “cannot save [their] class” (Gonzalez-Arias, 191), this poem works to reimagine the importance of the working-class man in Irish society. Published in 1991, the poem can be seen to reflect on the 1980s - a period of economic distress, mass unemployment (O’Toole 9), and increased heroin addiction in Dublin city (Hayden). Meehan’s working, or “underclass” identity is central to her work (Meehan,“The Body Politic” 258), and in this poem she celebrates the lives of those who make up her community. Social status is described by Sally Munt as “inform[ing] and prescrib[ing] our mobility through social space” (3). Social class has the ability to “affect our bodily practices, circumscribe our ideational reality, our sense of self” (Munt 3). This analysis attests to the extent to which class can come to define a person. It also locates the experience of class within the body, and it is the celebration of the working class body which is central to this poem. For Meehan, Ireland is a country which “fetishized class”, and in doing so, ostracized and othered the working class (Meehan “The Body Politic” 257 - 258). This poem seeks to recentre the working class experience, to elevate and to some extent assimilate it. From the beginning, Meehan locates this poem in the working class experience, grounding it in signifiers such as “the piebald horse”, “the boxroom”, “the estate”, “industrial estate”, “Dubber Cross”, “Finglas garden” (11-12). From this location, the speaker engages in a sustained observation of her father, as he makes his way out into the garden. Through watching, she sees her father afresh - He was older than I had reckoned, his hair completely silver, and for the first time I saw the stoop of his shoulder, saw that his leg was stiff. (11) It is as though she sees him in a way she never has before, and perhaps understands him better as a result. The speaker continues watching, and now she pulls the reader closer with a question - “What’s he at?/ So early and still stars in the west?” (11). She implicates us in the act of watching. She asks us to watch with her. And as we watch Meehan paints a picture of her father that is both beautiful and powerful. It is a moment of vitality and joy when the “birds/of every size, shape, colour” come flying into the garden (11), and as “The sun cleared O’Reilly’s chimney” (12), her father is transformed, “perceived” now as “a perfect vision of St Francis” (12), he is elevated from the “underclass” to the realm of saints. With his arms thrown up, his image recalls Christ himself. Through this act of viewing he is “made whole, made young again” (12). By envisioning her father in this way, she aligns and centres him both in the natural world and so the natural order of things, and also with Christianity - the dominant religion of Ireland. This removes from him the status of ‘Other’. The poem closes with the reminder that we are in a Finglas garden, and that this poem is class-specific. Through extended observation and a shift in perception, Meehan elevates her father to the status of a Saint, completely shifting his social standing in Catholic Ireland. Although her father does not speak in the poem, and Meeahn says nothing of class, it is a powerful reclamation of space within the visual landscape of Irish culture. Through intricate acts of viewing, carried out by both speaker and reader, Meehan centres the decentered. By demanding that we look, in detail, at the often invisible members of our society, she creates spaces for statements, as in “The Statue”, or moments for celebration, as in “My Father”; and so gives voice to the voiceless. |
AuthorLara Ní Chuirrín is a writer and researcher, with a particular passion for contemporary art practices. Categories |