Papers by Kate Antosik-Parsons
L’INTERNATIONALE – Stories and Threads: Perspectives on Art Archives, 2022
Reflections on the embodied experiences of oral histories of performance art in Ireland from the ... more Reflections on the embodied experiences of oral histories of performance art in Ireland from the 1990s.
Published in the e-book L’INTERNATIONALE – Stories and Threads: Perspectives on Art Archives. Edited by Sara Buraya Boned, Jennifer Fitzgibbon, Sezin Romi
2022
ISBN 978-91-527-1342-6
Études irlandaises, 2020
Abstract: The work of internationally acclaimed lens-based artist Willie Doherty proposes rich an... more Abstract: The work of internationally acclaimed lens-based artist Willie Doherty proposes rich and nuanced understandings of the agency and participation of women in the Troubles in Northern Ireland. In a large number of visual and cultural representations of the ethno-nationalist violence of the Troubles, the conflict is often gendered as masculine, with women featuring primarily as victims and innocent bystanders. This essay examines Doherty’s Same Difference (1990) and Closure (2005), two key works that incorporate a female subject. It considers these works in relation to the concept of “abject femininity”, a non-normative femininity that is at odds with dominant representations of women as passive, nurturing care-givers or victims of conflict. This essay argues that the non-normative femininities in Same Difference and Closure offer opportunities to complicate understandings of women’s public and private roles in Northern Ireland.
This Place: Amanda Coogan & Tonya McMullan, 2020
Exhibition Catalogue Essay for Amanda Coogan's exhibition at the Millennium Court Arts Centre, Po... more Exhibition Catalogue Essay for Amanda Coogan's exhibition at the Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown NI. ISBN 978-0-9928266-5-9
Scene , 2020
Please contact me to read a copy of this article if you can’t access it through your library.
Ov... more Please contact me to read a copy of this article if you can’t access it through your library.
Over the last 50 years, Irish feminists have campaigned for women’s sexual health and reproductive rights, including access to contraception, legal abortion and choice in maternity care and childbirth. Recent cases like Ms. Y (2014), P. P. v. HSE (2014) and Ms. B (2016) invite a close scrutiny of the power dynamics relating to women’s reproductive bodies in Ireland. This article examines Becoming Beloved (1995) and The Touching Contract (2016), two performance-based artworks located in Dublin maternity hospitals. Both artworks centred the body as a site of production to interrogate these power dynamics while engaging with specifics of each location. This article charts the management of childbearing bodies in Ireland, looking specifically at issues concerning reproductive and sexual health, information and consent. It details how Irish performance art has responded to the political, social and cultural climate of restrictions on women’s bodies. Becoming Beloved and The Touching Contract both employed haptic encounters, multisensory perceptions composed of tactile, kinaesthetic and proprioceptive sensations that extended beyond a visual aesthetic. These haptic encounters contributed to a dimension of viewer engagement, integral in performance art to activating meaning. This article examines how these two artworks utilized haptic encounters to produce a situated, corporeal knowledge that critiqued the authority wielded over reproductive bodies by political, religious and medical establishments in Ireland.
RISE: Review of Irish Studies in Europe, 2020
This article examines Amanda Coogan’s Floats in the Aether (2018-19) in relation to ‘home rule’, ... more This article examines Amanda Coogan’s Floats in the Aether (2018-19) in relation to ‘home rule’, broadly interpreted to encompass the agitation for Irish women’s citizenship and autonomy. Between November 2018 and January 2019 Irish performance artist Amanda Coogan staged performances with 100 women and girls responding to the exhibition Markievicz: Portraits and Propaganda. This was the first performance artwork commissioned by the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI). The exhibition and Coogan’s commission marked the centenary of women’s suffrage (1918), the election of Constance Markievicz (1868-1927)to British House of Parliament (1918), and the formation of the first Dáil (1919). A revolutionary feminist, socialist and republican, Markievicz was an enigmatic figure who, as an artist, carefully crafted images of herself using performative photography to construct a public persona. Floats in the Aether included secondary school students, the Dublin Theatre of the Deaf, a choir and sitting female parliamentarians including two former Tánaistí, Cabinet Ministers and TDs. This essay argues that Coogan’s performances, situated at the intersection of historical and institutional critiques, offer new perspectives on ‘home rule’ with regards to Irish women’s history, gendered spaces and the struggle for gender equality.
The Polish Journal of Aesthetics, 2019
This article examines the embodiment of pain in artist Máiréad Delaney's performance 'At What Poi... more This article examines the embodiment of pain in artist Máiréad Delaney's performance 'At What Point It Breaks' (2017). Drawing upon the gender-based violence of symphysiotomy and its resulting pain, Delaney's work employs an affective aesthetics and negotiates a breach in representation, thus facilitating viewer engagement with the performance as a means of critiquing the insidious control of women's bodies and the resulting reproductive injustices in Irish society.
Performance Art in Ireland: A History, ed. Áine Phillips, London: The Live Art Agency and Reaktion Books, 2015
Reproductive Justice and Sexual Rights Transnational Perspectives, 2019
NOTE: This is a pre-print version of the paper from 2017
This chapter examines the power of vi... more NOTE: This is a pre-print version of the paper from 2017
This chapter examines the power of visual images to address lingering colonial legacies and the subsequent patriarchal, postcolonial conditions that reinforce strict control over women’s sexual and reproductive health in Ireland. Framed by historical context, it analyzes contemporary Irish art, visual culture, and embodied activist gestures, focusing on how these images manifest gendered histories, assert visible resistance and signs of solidarity, and, importantly, reveal hidden journeys women in Ireland take for reproductive healthcare. This chapter, like the art it details, aims to counter the silencing of those impacted by the reproductive injustices in Ireland.
This article covers the Repeal Project Jumper, the Abortion Rights Campaign imagery, Artists' Campaign to Repeal the 8th, Speaking of IMELDA, the Maser Mural, #TwoWomenTravel, artwork by Siobhan Clancy and Áine Phillips amongst others.
I'm happy to share this paper if you don't have access through your library - just contact me for a pdf.
A response to Martin O'Brien's recent performance at the Dublin Live Art Festival.
Nordic Irish Studies, Volume 13, Number 1, 2014
This essay examines Redress (2010-2012), a recent series of performances by Irish artist Aine Phi... more This essay examines Redress (2010-2012), a recent series of performances by Irish artist Aine Phillips that interrogate the legacy of abuse perpetrated in Irish residential institutions in the 20th century and the official efforts to compensate abuse survivors. These powerful performances are imbued with simple, yet compelling bodily gestures informed by spectatorship, memory and representation. Redress embodies the marginalised memories of abuse survivors, revealing the deliberate gaps and silences in Irish hegemonic narratives.
Terrible Beauty-Art, Crisis, Change and the Office of Non-Compliance was the inaugural exhibition... more Terrible Beauty-Art, Crisis, Change and the Office of Non-Compliance was the inaugural exhibition of Dublin Contemporary, a new high-profile international art exhibition that featured over a hundred artists, forty of them Irish. The main venue spanned eighty-four rooms, three floors and two wings of Earlsfort Terrace, a deceptively large neo-classical building, formerly belonging to University College Dublin. The theme was inspired by William Butler Yeats' poem Easter 1916, suggesting that contemporary art has reached a critical point. The Office of Non-Compliance, a forum for artist-led discourse and discussion, was an on-going element throughout the exhibition that allowed for a dialogic exchange. This aspect of the exhibition presented an exciting possibility for a deeper engagement with contemporary art practice, however, it did not appear to be immediately accessible to the average viewer, nor was its function entirely clear. The sheer size and breadth of the exhibition
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Papers by Kate Antosik-Parsons
Published in the e-book L’INTERNATIONALE – Stories and Threads: Perspectives on Art Archives. Edited by Sara Buraya Boned, Jennifer Fitzgibbon, Sezin Romi
2022
ISBN 978-91-527-1342-6
Over the last 50 years, Irish feminists have campaigned for women’s sexual health and reproductive rights, including access to contraception, legal abortion and choice in maternity care and childbirth. Recent cases like Ms. Y (2014), P. P. v. HSE (2014) and Ms. B (2016) invite a close scrutiny of the power dynamics relating to women’s reproductive bodies in Ireland. This article examines Becoming Beloved (1995) and The Touching Contract (2016), two performance-based artworks located in Dublin maternity hospitals. Both artworks centred the body as a site of production to interrogate these power dynamics while engaging with specifics of each location. This article charts the management of childbearing bodies in Ireland, looking specifically at issues concerning reproductive and sexual health, information and consent. It details how Irish performance art has responded to the political, social and cultural climate of restrictions on women’s bodies. Becoming Beloved and The Touching Contract both employed haptic encounters, multisensory perceptions composed of tactile, kinaesthetic and proprioceptive sensations that extended beyond a visual aesthetic. These haptic encounters contributed to a dimension of viewer engagement, integral in performance art to activating meaning. This article examines how these two artworks utilized haptic encounters to produce a situated, corporeal knowledge that critiqued the authority wielded over reproductive bodies by political, religious and medical establishments in Ireland.
This chapter examines the power of visual images to address lingering colonial legacies and the subsequent patriarchal, postcolonial conditions that reinforce strict control over women’s sexual and reproductive health in Ireland. Framed by historical context, it analyzes contemporary Irish art, visual culture, and embodied activist gestures, focusing on how these images manifest gendered histories, assert visible resistance and signs of solidarity, and, importantly, reveal hidden journeys women in Ireland take for reproductive healthcare. This chapter, like the art it details, aims to counter the silencing of those impacted by the reproductive injustices in Ireland.
This article covers the Repeal Project Jumper, the Abortion Rights Campaign imagery, Artists' Campaign to Repeal the 8th, Speaking of IMELDA, the Maser Mural, #TwoWomenTravel, artwork by Siobhan Clancy and Áine Phillips amongst others.
I'm happy to share this paper if you don't have access through your library - just contact me for a pdf.
See http://circaartmagazine.website/tmn2018/dr-kate-antosik-parsons-el-putnam-and-david-stalling/
Published in the e-book L’INTERNATIONALE – Stories and Threads: Perspectives on Art Archives. Edited by Sara Buraya Boned, Jennifer Fitzgibbon, Sezin Romi
2022
ISBN 978-91-527-1342-6
Over the last 50 years, Irish feminists have campaigned for women’s sexual health and reproductive rights, including access to contraception, legal abortion and choice in maternity care and childbirth. Recent cases like Ms. Y (2014), P. P. v. HSE (2014) and Ms. B (2016) invite a close scrutiny of the power dynamics relating to women’s reproductive bodies in Ireland. This article examines Becoming Beloved (1995) and The Touching Contract (2016), two performance-based artworks located in Dublin maternity hospitals. Both artworks centred the body as a site of production to interrogate these power dynamics while engaging with specifics of each location. This article charts the management of childbearing bodies in Ireland, looking specifically at issues concerning reproductive and sexual health, information and consent. It details how Irish performance art has responded to the political, social and cultural climate of restrictions on women’s bodies. Becoming Beloved and The Touching Contract both employed haptic encounters, multisensory perceptions composed of tactile, kinaesthetic and proprioceptive sensations that extended beyond a visual aesthetic. These haptic encounters contributed to a dimension of viewer engagement, integral in performance art to activating meaning. This article examines how these two artworks utilized haptic encounters to produce a situated, corporeal knowledge that critiqued the authority wielded over reproductive bodies by political, religious and medical establishments in Ireland.
This chapter examines the power of visual images to address lingering colonial legacies and the subsequent patriarchal, postcolonial conditions that reinforce strict control over women’s sexual and reproductive health in Ireland. Framed by historical context, it analyzes contemporary Irish art, visual culture, and embodied activist gestures, focusing on how these images manifest gendered histories, assert visible resistance and signs of solidarity, and, importantly, reveal hidden journeys women in Ireland take for reproductive healthcare. This chapter, like the art it details, aims to counter the silencing of those impacted by the reproductive injustices in Ireland.
This article covers the Repeal Project Jumper, the Abortion Rights Campaign imagery, Artists' Campaign to Repeal the 8th, Speaking of IMELDA, the Maser Mural, #TwoWomenTravel, artwork by Siobhan Clancy and Áine Phillips amongst others.
I'm happy to share this paper if you don't have access through your library - just contact me for a pdf.
See http://circaartmagazine.website/tmn2018/dr-kate-antosik-parsons-el-putnam-and-david-stalling/