She suffered milk and birth

Polaroid emulsion lift on scallop shells

(2025)

She suffered milk and birth is an installation composed of seven scallop shells containing Polaroid emulsion lifts. The title is taken from Seamus Heaney’s poem Maighdean Mara, inspired by the mermaid and selkie tales of Ireland’s coastlines.

Scallop shells, symbols of fertility, home and protection, function as both shelter and containment. The emulsions evoke Irish histories of restriction and control, echoing the ways transgressive women’s bodies have been disciplined, shorn, silenced, and ‘othered’ under various biopolitical regimes. Through these gestures, autobiographical narratives become entangled with mythic lineage.

In Irish tellings of the legend, the moment of capture is during the intimate act of brushing hair, which is made transgressive by its exposure. The severed hair references both mythic capture and historical practices in Ireland in which women’s hair was cut or shorn to mark and discipline transgressive behaviour. Seaweed reads as a metaphor for milk ducts and enforced fertility, echoing narratives in which selkie women were compelled into motherhood. This resonates with the lived realities of Irish women whose reproductive choices were tightly constrained.