Máiréad Delaney

Máiréad Delaney is a performance artist living and working in Vermont (USA) where she is currently salvage-building her own house, having graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She makes durational performance actions and installations that often reference both domestic or industrial environments. 

Máiréad questions how gendered bodies respond under systemic violence as it plays out structurally, intimately, and continuously. Her work explores how unspeakable violences extend into, permeate and overflow the everyday. If our bodies are used as instruments or vessels, the control of which is embedded in nationalist identity projects, empire building and eugenics, Mairead’s research explores the conditions of this violence and our grief, and how to register their effects over time.

“November in Folkestone is full of the sea and the wind. The sea is grey and the wind on the cliffs blows my body sideways. I feel small amidst these forces, which are also forces of impassive erosion. Perhaps in my work I try to triangulate slippery, faceless forces by sticking an object in between us and grappling with the object. But my intention is to demand the attention of what is by nature unheeding— i.e. sources of violence which refuse accountability. While I'm here at ]ps[ I’m thinking of working with compressed air, the limited hours of daylight, slate, the space at the top of a ladder and my own twisting spine. And to keep running next to the sea!” - Máiréad Delaney

Máiréad is currently artist in residence (alongside Ria Hartley) at ]performance s p a c e [ Folkstone for the month of November as part of their PAUSE & AFFECT programme. During this time she will continue her research into slate, ladders, compressed air and ‘backbone,' accessing forms of gendered violence, gaps, weight, holes & erasure. A public salon will be hosted by Threads on Wednesday 14 November followed by a final public event at the end of November (dates & times to be determined by the residency process). You can follow the artists residency process via the blog. 

Delaney has exhibited internationally, in New York, Ireland and the UK, Chile and Ethiopia. She has presented work in the Science Gallery Dublin, in partnership with MoMA’s Design and Violence, The Ulster Museum in Belfast, at MANA Contemporary Chicago, The Zhou B Art Center, Defibrillator Gallery, Links Hall, The Queens Museum, The Fergus McCaffrey Gallery, the VI International Biennial of Performance DEFORMES, for the Dublin Live Art Festival, Glasgow's BUZZCUT, Performance is Alive at Satellite Art Show, Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival, the Brooklyn International Festival of Performance Art, EXPO Chicago and Art Basel Miami.

Categories: Featured Artist

Date Posted: 21 November 2018