In Being Haunted by the Breezes, Now How Will You Exist?, the work emerges from the artist’s urge to reconnect directly with material processes and the bodily act of making. Specifically, Bullo seeks to celebrate the return of the feminine and her/their personification and incarnation as a creatrix, fighter and destroyer.
Being Haunted by the Breezes, Now How Will You Exist?, explores fictional, personal, archaeological and mythological narratives concerning Matrilinear ascendency. This includes Marija Gimbutas’ Kurgan hypothesis, which argues that European prehistoric culture was female-centred, and that the world was at peace when god was a woman.
In the many layered narratives weaved in the work, the artist reverts to the tale of the gorgon Medusa, connecting it to transliterations of ancient Sumerian texts dating back to 2000 BC. To achieve this, Bullo engaged directly with Sumerian texts with Professor Martin Worthington at Trinity College Dublin, practicing and performing a range of phonetic expressions of this ancient language. Phonemes, lexemes and words of this ancient language are brought to life, resonating and cascading throughout the gallery space.
In the artist’s own words, “Envisaged as archaeological dystopian assemblages, these works to me are apotropaic sculpture-amultes and esoteric spaces, from which one can resist the repressive discriminatory framework of patriarchal culture.”
BIO
Cecilia Bullo (IRL/ITA), is a bicultural visual artist based in Dublin working primarily in sculpture and installation. Her practice is research-based and informed by historical, mythological, psychoanalytic and feminist theories, which create a vital conceptual framework for her physical work. She has studied sculpture at IADT; Brera Fine Art Academy, Milan; the Academy of Fine Art, Athens and in 2009 she received her MFA from the National College of Art & Design (NCAD), Dublin.
Her work has been exhibited widely in Ireland and internationally in exhibitions such as, I know why the caged bird sings, curated by Stef Van Bellingen, WARP, Sint-Niklaas, BE, (2022); Material Stories, curated by Helen Carey, Galerie Michaela Stock, Vienna, AUT, (2022); Biomedia: Illness, Art and Medicine, curated by Felipe Osornio and CLOT Magazine, Museum of Contemporary Art, Querétaro, MX (2020); Artrooms Fair Roma, selected by Gianluca Marziani, International Contemporary Art Fair, Rome, ITA (2018); and Transgender, Gender & Psychoanalysis, curated by Mandy Wax and Spencer Rowel, Freud Museum/Draper Hall, London, UK (2017).
She is currently an artist in residence at Fire Station Artists’ Studios having received the FSAS Residential Studio Award (2020/2023). She is a recipient of numerous awards from organisations such as, The Arts Council of Ireland, DLR COCO/Creative Ireland, DCC and Culture Ireland.
Recent projects include her solo show, Leigheas-Liminalis: antidotes for melancholic gestures at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, invited by Ruth Carrol and curated by Sarah Searson (2022/23) and Periodical Review 12—Practical Magic, curated by Julia Mustacchi, Pallas Projects/Studios, Dublin (2022/23).
Image: Cecilia Bullo, ‘She grew the tree plant, she grew the plant, she grew the primeval mother: The plants of lamentation have sprouted’, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
