Dara Hull

University of Ulster

Project Statement:

Heirlooms
Thirty-five years ago, my mother painted a doll, Cosetta. It is an observational study of a doll forgotten at the back of a room, no longer wanted. The painting now resides on the floor in a room of mess, forgotten and left to the side. Never on the wall.  

This is how my mother often recalls having felt when she was growing up, isolated in the lonely corners of a room. This feeling has never truly left her, seeping into her life and relationship with others. To me this painting was unknowingly a self-portrait. When I look at Cosetta, I see my mother. The cause of her feelings of isolation opened a question of female relationships in the family; of how we impact and mould one another.

The camera acts as a tool of investigation into transgenerational trauma, held in both the body and the mind. I look at my mother, grandmother and myself to contemplate the complex relationship of shared experience and pain that is passed down generationally. Photography and textile meet in the form of a cyanotype tapestry, a medium that speaks of connectivity and ancestry. The unpredictable and imperfect result of sun printing lends itself to the themes of subjective wounds in the family.

Artist Bio:

Dara Hull is a Northern Irish lens based artist. She uses the camera to contemplate the impact of both psychological and domestic space on the body and mind. There are themes of memory and relationships in her work.