When we think of ways to right historic wrongs or overcome prejudices, art might not be the first solution we turn to. Ireland’s legacy of misogyny – a few examples being the decades-long fight to repeal the 8th and the omnipresence of the Catholic Church in our culture and institutions – seems so embedded into our environment and infrastructure that only deep structural change can resolve it. But planning takes time. While policymakers and activists take more straightforward channels to change, a dedicated core of artists have been working to highlight women’s struggles through the medium they know best.
For The Performing Activism Collective, art will always be part of the solution. The Dublin-based Collective’s ongoing research project, ‘Abortion in the Spotlight’, asks anyone who has had an experience accessing abortion services in Ireland to share their story with them in the form of a letter. Then they turn the letter into an experimental art piece based on the images and feelings that story evokes, to share on social media.
Lauren Kelly, who founded the Collective alongside Saibh Aris, Leah Whelan and Jennifer Philips, describes performance art as her passion; she told Trinity News that as an active performance artist of 7 years, “even just to make one person feel more heard, that’s a huge success to me.”
“In terms of performance art, people look at you and immediately put themselves in your shoes”
“We can talk about politics all day,” she said, “and we can talk about what we can and can’t do, but when it comes to actually making people feel something, art is the tool for this. Words can keep going in circles… In terms of performance art, people look at you and immediately put themselves in your shoes.”
Abortion in the Spotlight in its current form is, essentially, a research project into the failings of the Irish sexual healthcare system – but an atypical one. “There has been research done before, but it’s all statistics,” Kelly said. “We want to heal through telling stories.”
“No one’s story gets left behind.”
The stories being told aren’t the Collective’s own, although Aris pointed to her own experience accessing abortion services in Ireland as part of her motivation for getting involved in the project. Because of the intimate nature of the letters that Abortion in the Spotlight receive, sharing them is a huge act of trust. “We’ve been telling people (who participate in the project), if you want to stay in touch, let us know,” Kelly said. “More people are interested in staying in touch than not. It’s really emotional.”
Part of their goal is to find voices “that maybe didn’t get much attention first time round,” Aris explained, “and finding out what’s an issue for them… Accessing abortion care should be about nurture and care, and it’s not really there.” While we shouldn’t expect artists to fill the gaps in healthcare infrastructure, the Collective say they’re still doing their best to promote healing and build a community. “It’s their healing that needs to be focused on,” Aris said. “When we read the letters (from participants)… most times you end up crying. You realise how strong people can be, and they’re not feeling supported. What’s driving us is that people don’t have those feelings anymore.”
While building a supportive community is certainly a positive side effect of the project, the Collective always had the original goal of bringing about political change through their art. Kelly cited Marina Abramović, the storied Serbian performance artist behind Rhythm 0 and The Artist is Present, as well as Suzanne Lacey, an American social practice artist, as influences. Aris and Kelly, though they knew each other in school, became collaborators through ROSA, an international socialist feminist organisation. “I’ve been going to protests for years,” Aris said, “and I eventually became immune to seeing the placards, (and) the posters, I just didn’t see them anymore. I understood their value but for me they didn’t have an impact.”
Meanwhile, Aris said the performance art that she saw being done by artists like Kelly was able to move her in ways that conventional protest didn’t: “I remembered why I was there,” she said, “what the cause was for. Whatever it is you’re fighting for, that’s what people will remember.”
“Art can distil a complex political message into a single image, and the power that has can be tremendous”
Unlike other mediums, art can distil a complex political message into a single image, and the power that has can be tremendous. But what happens when you’re fighting against an image – one of the most iconic images of Dublin? Musician Tilly Cripwell found herself performing next to the Molly Malone statue often, as busking was her main source of income. “I just saw hundreds of people going up to grope the statue any time they’re there,” she said. “I got more frustrated and annoyed by this happening, and so one day I went home to my housemates and was like – ‘I’ve had enough, I’m going to do something about it”.
She made an Instagram post with a hashtag: #LeavemollymAlone. “The campaign kind of did its own press,” she said. “I had publications getting involved, radio and news channels, and that pushed it further.” The public response online was hugely empowering: “it validated the cause,” she said. “Clearly people felt that there was controversy around it.”
“In 2014, the statue was moved because of the Luas line,” she told Trinity News, “and in that process, they revarnished everything except for her boobs, because they wanted to keep that discoloration there, and keep the ‘tradition’ alive.” The image is clear; the message potentially hostile.
Statues are a part of the cityscape that can be easy to overlook, but as Tilly Cripwell learned, their distribution reflects a sexist past that we shouldn’t ignore. “There are a handful, at best, of female statues in the city… there aren’t any people actually being commemorated,” she explained. “On O’Connell street there’s a male statue every 50 metres or so.” The positioning of the statues themselves, Cripwell thought, contributed to the dramatic difference in messaging. “All the female statues except Eirinn are at street level. In a symbolic and physical way, (it) really undermines the statues and devalues them.”
“A lot of people will say it’s just a statue, but then, culture is being perpetuated and communicated through statues which immortalise people and the things they’ve done.”
Tilly knows more work needs to be done; though the hashtag and its media response has been ongoing since the start of the year she told Trinity News that the council’s response to the campaign has been lacking. She hopes that her new project – a re-recording of the Molly Malone song, now out on her SoundCloud, with two additional verses that highlight the respect we owe her memory – will help the campaign regain momentum in the public eye.
Meanwhile, the Performance Arts Collective want to continue their project: according to Aris, the long term goal is to “change the narrative around abortion care in Ireland, (and) hopefully remove the weight of stigma.”
“We know there will have to be a point where we have to say ok, no more stories, but for now we’re just seeing where it goes,” Kelly added. “Women are still told, ‘don’t be talking about that, or you’ll scare men’. When women are embracing their boldness and radicalness and using it as a tool to make art, it’s one of the most beautiful things.”
With projects like this – operating outside of traditional politics – it’s hard to know if the powers that be will eventually hear your voice. Artists like Tilly or the Collective can only rely on their outpouring of public support as proof that something is shifting. “We don’t exactly know what the end goal is,” Kelly told Trinity News, “but it feels like we’re pushing in the right way.”
