Class of 2024 • Installation

Mary Madeleine McCarroll


Mary Madeleine McCarroll
Institution
National College of Art and Design (NCAD)

Medium
Installation

Graduation Year
Class of 2024


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Rooted in my Irish and Bahamian heritage—two post-colonial regions—my artistic practice has been shaped by observation and critical analysis of how colonial legacies shape contemporary realities. My work interrogates themes of race, identity, and spirituality, with a current emphasis on post-colonialism and its implications for the human condition in modern society. I consider spirituality a potent means for both socio-cultural resistance and the preservation of cultural identity. My visual language embraces allegory through various mediums, encompassing installation art, photography, sculpture, and paint. My most recent body of work, ‘Lost and Giddy,’ is a multimedia performance-based installation exploring the deep implications of colonialism and the ensuing loss of identity. I employ blackboards as pedagogical instruments to impart indigenous African and Caribbean philosophical and spiritual teachings, subverting their traditional institutional function by elevating deeply spiritual cultures, historically dismissed as primitive. The installation integrates sculptural representations evoking African traditional sculpture, emphasising the historical appropriation of these sacred objects within institutional settings, displaced from their original contexts. However, my sculptures portray Douens—drawn from Caribbean folklore—these lost and giddy figures, portrayed with backwards feet and disjointed bodies, epitomise the enduring spirit of loss inflicted by colonialism.
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