AISLING CONROY

Statement

In this new work I explore censorship through the historic symbolic reference of the burning book. The current climate of media censorship, cancel-culture, silencing, hate speech, and modern day witch hunts can lead to involuntary self censorship. The arena for debate and critical thinking has narrowed considerably. Open discussion and disparate voices are often dismissed or shut down. 

Censored artists were and still are often the visionaries, the luminaries, the Avant Garde free thinkers. “I am the fire upon the altar. I am the sacrificial butter” is a line from James Joyce’s Ulysses which I have appropriated as a metaphor. The sacrifice of an artist's work to public critique and potential abhorrence paves the way for other artists by shining a light on the shame of society and thus offers a path to liberation. 

In the process of making this work, the ashes collected from an incinerated copy of Ulysses were used to create a pigment. Through this ritual, the fire symbolism is turned on its head, yielding the flames of fear and shame that incited these book burnings, to transform into a light for all artists and activists. The burning of the book now becomes the sacrificial butter. The pigment is the new blood running through the veins of each form that makes the image, an attempt at transfiguration through art, a cultural transmutation, alchemy; eternal.