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Arlene Caffrey

Artworks

Narrative

Exploring the dance between public and private expression, the modest and obscene, the immediate and the permanent, this practice aims to challenge how the female body and sexual-self is perceived in cultures which are underpinned by patriarchal ideas.

Embodied experience and the subjective feminine self are expressed through sculptural artefacts, live performance and image-based works, which are inspired by the artist’s lived experience as an Irish woman in Sevilla and her observed patterns of everyday misogyny by local men.

Ceramic panties and portraits of the artist explore the collective consciousness of signifiers surrounding female sexual expression, decency and visceral lust.

The live performance is informed by the private letters of celebrated modernist Irish writer James Joyce to his wife Nora Barnacle; explicit sexual self-expression, lust and yearning meet with deconstructed erotic dancing.

Arlene’s practice seeks to subvert and challenge dominant narratives about what it means to exist as a female sexual being. The research context is the changing cultural and socio-political landscape of contemporary Ireland, where evolved ideas about feminism, embodied expression and sexual liberation are more prevalent than in Spain.

Many thanks to Inma Ortega for her photographic contributions to this project.

Biography

Arlene Caffrey is an interdisciplinary visual artist and educator from Kilkenny, Ireland. Working across the media of performance, sculpture and the written word, her practice is informed by her experience as a professional pole dancer, as well as a dash of existential dread and fondness for postmodern literature.

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