SIGN, SYMBOL, WORD
Curated by The Project Twins for Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival
1st - 8th August 2025
From stone carvings to digital code, people have always used symbols to make sense of the world. This open call invites artists to play with, disrupt, or reimagine the signs and symbols that shape our experience. How do meaning, form, and context shift when language becomes image, or image speaks like language.
TOTEM: Síle, Naga, Anubis, Druid; Aisling Conroy
Acrylic on wood; 104 x 84 x 2 cm (quadriptych)
Totems, historically imbued with spiritual and cultural significance, serve as personal anchors, carrying meaning and memory. In times of uncertainty, we seek symbols, objects that ground us, remind us of strength, and connect us to something beyond the chaos that we are currently experiencing.
These Totem works are part of a larger series (in drawing, painting and print) that explores the totem as a vessel for resilience, drawing from ancient archetypes both in Irish and world history that have guided humanity through transitions for centuries.
Selected for this quadriptych is the Druid a keeper of nature’s wisdom, represents the deep-rooted knowledge and balance we need to navigate upheaval, also represented as the Head of Janus, Roman god of beginnings, endings, transitions, gates, and doorways; Síle (Sheela Na Gig) is a raw symbol of the divine feminine, birth, rebirth and has been used for protection; Naga (the snake), embodies transformation, shedding the past, and renewal in times of personal or collective crisis; and finally, Anubis /(the Black Dog in Irish culture) the ancient Egyptian guardian of the afterlife, stands as a reminder of death, rebirth and safe passage, the acceptance of change, and the ability to walk between worlds with courage.
To further emphasise the primal and universal nature of these totems, the use of primitive drawing techniques, evokes the raw, unfiltered expressions of early human mark-making. These simplified yet strong forms strip away excess, allowing the symbols to resonate on an instinctual level. Like ancient cave paintings and petroglyphs/ rock carvings, they serve as a direct link to our collective past, reminding us that in times of uncertainty, we can turn to the most fundamental aspects of expression to find guidance and meaning.