Awarded the RDS Members' Art Fund Award €5,000
Keara is a 22-year-old visual media artist with Cerebral Palsy. She graduated from Ulster University’s Belfast School of Art in BA (Hons) Photography with Video, earning First Class Honours. She is of Filipino and Northern Irish descent, though she was born and raised in Canada.
Her work is influenced by her personal experiences; dealing with themes of identity, family, diaspora, migration and urban decay. Her most recent project, ‘Kapuluan’, is a ten-minute poetic documentary film in which she speaks her father’s language of Tagalog to discuss the connection to her Filipino roots and to her father, though she has never spoken the language to that extent before. This unsettling cultural and familial blank in ‘Kapuluan’, is the main focus of the film.
The very nature of language - whether it be spoken, written, or seen through gestures - is such a vital piece of what it means to form connections with another. In her film, Keara questions human connections and the meanings of home, utilising elements of Gaston Bachelard's text, ‘The Poetics of Space’. As the original text was published in French, then translated and released in English, Keara plays with the idea that by translating it further into Tagalog, the initial meaning may have changed into something entirely different - a metamorphosis of the text.
Commenting on Keara’s work, the 2024 RDS VAA judging panel said;
“Keara’s work is poignant and beautiful as it deals with issues of longing, belonging and identity. She deftly explores relationships, language and place in her work.
Image: Keara Simonsen, Still from Kapuluan, Image courtesy of the artist.
#RDSVAAs www.rds.ie/rds-foundation/arts
Instagram: @rdsdublin
X: @TheRDS
Facebook: RDSdublin
linkedin: TheRDS