Alice Maher
Alice Maher is an Irish artist renowned for her powerful visual language and profound exploration of nature, mythology, female identity, and the politics of the body. Her work often delves into the relationship between humans and nature, history and memory, through intricate craftsmanship and symbolic imagery. Over the years, Maher has maintained a deep interest in hair and its rich, often contradictory symbolic meanings. In her 1997 piece Ombre, she created life-sized charcoal drawings stretching from ceiling to floor, in which female figures are enveloped by the length of their hair. These works often evoke a sense of the primal and the contemporary.
I, too, am inclined to create with symbolic imagery. Maher’s treatment of symbolism and narrative in her work has been a significant inspiration to me. I am particularly drawn to the mysterious yet raw surrealist atmosphere in her art. In my own works, migratory birds and human identities exist in a fluid, interchangeable relationship. I aim to explore deeper and more layered visual expressions.