Solo exhibition · 2022
Balcony
Transformation, transcendence and queer existence in Achill.
Presented at St Thomas’ Hall in Dugort, Balcony considers the human body as both earthly and other-worldly: exposed, changing and capable of exceeding the structures that contain it.
The work uses the visual discipline of sacred manuscript art while refusing its patriarchal limits. The naked figure enters the miniature-derived field as an act of disobedience, making queerness materially present within a form historically associated with spiritual and courtly authority.
Mercy, St Thomas’ Hall, Dugort, Achill, 2022. Photo: Simon Mills
Imaginal space
Persian miniature painting does not use space as a neutral container. Garden, architecture, figure and ornament point toward an imaginal world understood as both beyond ordinary surroundings and present within the human soul. Balcony brings that spatial proposition into contact with queer embodiment.
Threshold
The balcony is neither fully interior nor exterior: a place of exposure, distance and possible passage.
Body
Nakedness appears as vulnerability and as refusal, interrupting the inherited grammar of sacred imagery.
Transformation
Painting becomes a structure through which a fixed social body can be imagined otherwise.
Exhibition record
Venue
St Thomas’ Hall, Dugort, Achill · 2022
Format
Solo presentation centred on painting and the architectural image of the balcony.
Context
An Achill-based body of work following the 2021 Heinrich Böll Cottage residency.
Balcony, St Thomas’ Hall, Dugort, Achill, 2022.