Event overview
Sheena Malone’s work looks at society’s close relationship to folklore in Ireland. Currently her interests, lie in the contemporary and historical practice of folk medicine in Ireland and is drawn from personal interviews, archival research and traditional plant lore which is combined with magico-religious beliefs about ‘the cure’, inherited healing abilities, the concept of the ‘bean feasa’ and the role of place. The work in this exhibition is inspired by the curative qualities of the Brat Bhríde, the mythology of the Tuatha Dé Danann and Ayurvedic medicine. Over a calendar year medicinal plants cited in Irish folklore archives were gathered to make natural dyes with the resulting dyed fabric combined to create a textile work symbolising a panacea – a cure-all. This work expands upon an ongoing series called The Kildare Folklore Pharmacy and has been supported by Kildare Arts Service.
Sheena Malone is a visual arts practitioner based in Berlin and Allenwood. A graduate of UCD and Stockholm University, in 2015 she was selected for CuratorLab at Konstfack Stockholm for a research programme investigating local Kildare folklore which led to the exhibition ‘Seven for a Story’ and the festival of contemporary art and local history called ‘Invisible Stories’ in 2017. For three years, she was artistic director of Dada Post, an artist-run space in a former fish factory in Schönholz, Berlin. In 2020, the Irish Embassy in Germany included her in their New Irish Creatives Festival. Recent exhibitions include ‘Spicebag’ at Backhaus Projects Berlin, ‘The Bud on the Bough’ curated by Michael Fortune, ‘Displacement and Belonging’ at Rua Red, ‘Déin Chécht’s Porridge’ at Riverbank Arts Centre, Newbridge and 'Irish Energy' at Die Möglichkeit einer Insel, Berlin as part of Zeitgeist Irland 2024, an initiative of Culture Ireland and the Embassy of Ireland in Germany.
