'is tírdhreach í' is an eight part series of miniature books that explores the relationship between colonialism, patriarchal social structures and environmental degradation. It explores the feminisation of Irish lands, and also the containment of the sexualised female body within the landscape, considering the lens one looks at the landscape through. Their diminutive size creates an intimacy between book and viewer, akin to the intimate way in which the female body is perceived and scrutinised. They are paired with magnifying glasses to read the 4pt size text, acting as a physical lens to further challenge the act of looking.
Book Spreads
book one focuses on imperialism instigating an economic model of nature as resource
book two looks at discourse that considers colonised lands as feminine / the bog acting as both a site of colonial tension and a feminine entity / rendered as wasted and virginal
book three explores the melancholic resonance of the bog / how this is mirrored in the melancholia associated with becoming a gendered, sexualised being
book four theorises that the construction of dualisms leads to a hierarchy where woman and nature are othered / cartesian dualism enabling the systemic exploitation of nature and woman to be carried out without moral reprehension
book five looks at the landscape as a visual construct fabricated by man rooted in a westernised way of seeing /
the implication that the visuality of the landscape is what leads to it's gendering / both nature and woman reduced to objects of observation
book six recognises the female body's containment within the landscape / how the feminised land, like woman herself, is intimately viewed and controlled by male power
book seven considers the role the catholic church played in the prevailing domination of female sexuality in post-colonial ireland / through the topographical mapping of both land and body
book eight hypothesises that the unseeing masculine gaze one looks at the landscape through exacerbates the climate crisis / an issue that disproportionately affects females