Who is that hiding under my breath? (2020)
drawing, video
Who is that hiding under my breath? presents a rubbing of my great-grandmother’s bed hung from my mother’s bedroom window. As the drawing breathes, butterflies come and go from the frame. The work attempts to consolidate what about the lives of four generations of women is shared - having been born, having slept, having dreamt, having drawn breath. Sleep is presented as a space for co-existence, where linear time collapses and lives which are separated by mortal boundaries can transect. The butterfly, whose life is lived in different bodies, hints at the possibility that a common embodied experience could drift between vessels - such as bodies, furniture, or dreams.
Isobel O’Donovan