In Brief: Performances

This page showcases my temporal and recorded performances that are central to my practice. I use the body, voice, and film to create immersive experiences that explore maternal memory, transgenerational affect, and feminist praxis. These performances, both intimate and public, invite audiences to engage with the unspoken dimensions of inherited trauma and resilience, offering a dynamic space for collective reflection and transformation.

My body and psyche move with my

grandmother’s engagement ring,

her rosary,

and my aunt’s letter to my mother.

The layer of ‘performances’ repeatedly enacts the four mysteries of the rosary—a touch of Irish Catholicism and state influence—disorienting and reorienting as the boundaries between private and public become porous. Each iteration reorients our breathing bodies.

Shared Breath – Reconfiguring Embodied Memory Through Practice

My work is an exploration of embodied memory and maternal affect—a practice where theory and lived experience interweave to reveal the unsayable dimensions of shame and resilience. It unfolds in four interrelated parts:

Private Air:
A personal realm where intimate readings and re-breathing a rediscovered letter evoke revelations. Here, the unfolding choreography with my mother over the dining room table in London—amid the realities of dementia—doubles affects, merging grief and laughter, and reawakening bodily and psychic memories once silenced by shame.

Public Air:
My voice extends into communal spaces—reading in settings imbued with ritual and tradition—where an (un)heard echo reflects the complex, often unspoken experiences of the Irish maternal. This public projection challenges conventional silences and invites a reconsideration of belonging.

Filmic Bodies:
Through filmic interventions, I capture moments when breath and movement interact with both intimate and public landscapes. The sonic rhythms of shared breath inform the visual cadence of each cut, creating a language of interruption that speaks to embodied memory across different geographies.

Embodied Circular Readings:
In collective sessions, my voice vibrates among participants as autobiographical, poetic, archival, and filmic narratives merge. These sessions transform temporal spaces into dynamic arenas where our shared breath, memories, and experiences converge in a fluid, ever-evolving choreography.

My practice unfolds durationally across artist residencies, community spaces, and academic settings. It begins with listening and reading groups that use Irish literature and conscious breathwork to cultivate awareness, body–mind connection, and emotional release. This sensory foundation paves the way for embodied circular readings and participatory workshops, where historical narratives and personal experiences of maternal shame are actively reinterpreted.

In this way, Shared Breath reconfigures academic discourse and cultural memory, opening new avenues for collective resilience and transformative learning.

My practice explores suspended breath and the gift of future breath—how we share air to reorient the Irish Catholic maternal, particularly within the mother-daughter relation. It asks: How can we collectively attend, without judgment, to the bodily, psychic, relational, and political triggers of shame? (Read further: Embodied Circular Readings)

Each layer of performance unfolds with varying intensities—through the inhale, the pause, and the exhale—capturing what Irigaray calls the “rhythm and melody of the universe” (Irigaray 2004, p. 50).

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