2024 Show, “Sisters, Not Twins”
Via a series of figurative nude paintings, followed by a final “Wall of Boobs” (comprising of x100 individual breasts portraits) the show is ambitious in scale and sentiment, as it provided a point of challenging enquiry on women’s experience of their own bodies.
A celebration of sisterhood and imperfection, this show shines a light on a lived experience so often ignored in Irish society, that of women. In the figurative paintings we see depictions women as refreshingly multi-dimensional - expressing anger, exhaustion, mischief and eye-rolling boredom. The “Wall of Boobs” then looks at the discrepancy between this societal symbol of sex and desire, and how it is at odds with women’s own lived reality of this contentious body part.
Participant inclusion
Representation was of huge importance for this project, and the participants included a wide range of ages, skin colours, sizes… Pregnant women; breastfeeding women; women who have had mastectomies; women who have had breast augmentations and reductions; trans women; intersex women; women who have had breast cancer. The depictions of these real bodies naked, vulnerable and exposed to the elements served as a nod to how many women express feeling on a day-to-day, even with clothes on.
The name of this show “Sisters, Not Twins” refers to a comment made by one of the women who volunteered to be part of the Wall of Boobs. Describing her lopsided breasts as “more sisters than twins”, the accepting tone of this comment resonated so well with the theme of this show - that we are not supposed to be carbon copies of each other, and that our sisterhood is more important than anything else - and the phrase has now become the leading message of the exhibition.
