Abstract
Emma Campbell, Keynote Speaker abstract:
My practice has been identified as part of the often provocative and political work of queers and feminists in the North of Ireland (Golden Thread Gallery, 2022). My contribution in these decades of creative production, endeavoured to be provocative (The Courtauld, 2022). Elsewhere, I have echoed Lippard’s claim (1984) that all artwork is political (Higgins, 2021) and cannot be disentangled from the complex intersecting systems that operate through the artworld (Pollock, 2003).
Politics breaks with the sensory self-evidence of the 'natural' order that destines specific individuals and groups to occupy positions of rule or of being ruled, assigning them to private or public lives, pinning them down1 to a certain time and space, to specific 'bodies', that is to specific ways of being, seeing and saying. (Ranciere, 2010p.139) (My Emphasis)
However, the work I have made about abortion in Northern Ireland was intentionally crafted to challenge, entice and complicate the deeply personal and political threads that make up the fabric of our lives as queer people, women and artists (The Courtauld, 2022). The playful conceit of this paper is hopefully, that as a queer woman artist who works collaboratively and dialogically, I and my peers contain the power of death, sex and magic. Inspired by one theory on the reason for the European Witch Trials, where Federici links private accumulation and the needs of capital with invisible domestic labour, selling sex and abortion, (2004). Women and queers are ‘wild’, frightening and dangerous (Halberstam & Nyong’o, 2018) and although we have always been here, we have emerged out of the footnotes and margins, emboldened (Grover, 1996) and in the power of the social relation of the photograph (Azoulay, 2008), the representation of assembly (Butler, 2018) and the reimagining of the intersectional pregnant people at the centre of the discourse, we are boldly challenging the status quo.
My practice has been identified as part of the often provocative and political work of queers and feminists in the North of Ireland (Golden Thread Gallery, 2022). My contribution in these decades of creative production, endeavoured to be provocative (The Courtauld, 2022). Elsewhere, I have echoed Lippard’s claim (1984) that all artwork is political (Higgins, 2021) and cannot be disentangled from the complex intersecting systems that operate through the artworld (Pollock, 2003).
Politics breaks with the sensory self-evidence of the 'natural' order that destines specific individuals and groups to occupy positions of rule or of being ruled, assigning them to private or public lives, pinning them down1 to a certain time and space, to specific 'bodies', that is to specific ways of being, seeing and saying. (Ranciere, 2010p.139) (My Emphasis)
However, the work I have made about abortion in Northern Ireland was intentionally crafted to challenge, entice and complicate the deeply personal and political threads that make up the fabric of our lives as queer people, women and artists (The Courtauld, 2022). The playful conceit of this paper is hopefully, that as a queer woman artist who works collaboratively and dialogically, I and my peers contain the power of death, sex and magic. Inspired by one theory on the reason for the European Witch Trials, where Federici links private accumulation and the needs of capital with invisible domestic labour, selling sex and abortion, (2004). Women and queers are ‘wild’, frightening and dangerous (Halberstam & Nyong’o, 2018) and although we have always been here, we have emerged out of the footnotes and margins, emboldened (Grover, 1996) and in the power of the social relation of the photograph (Azoulay, 2008), the representation of assembly (Butler, 2018) and the reimagining of the intersectional pregnant people at the centre of the discourse, we are boldly challenging the status quo.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages | 1-22 |
| Number of pages | 22 |
| Publication status | Unpublished - 21 Jan 2022 |
| Event | Northern Ireland’s Feminist and Queer Art Histories: Courtauld Institute - Courtauld Research Forum Duration: 21 Jan 2022 → … |
Conference
| Conference | Northern Ireland’s Feminist and Queer Art Histories |
|---|---|
| Period | 21/01/22 → … |
Keywords
- art activism, photography, abortion, Northern Ireland, Art, street intervention, reproductive health, magic, Silvia Federici
