September 21 – December 1
to be nowhere (2022) is part of Léann’s larger transdisciplinary project the middle of nowhere, an ongoing series of (non) site-specific public interventions and actions in Dublin in 2022. For the 2024 Biennial, the work takes transitory forms within our main exhibition hub in downtown Toronto, including a photograph presented as a billboard. The main image, stemming from a live tattooing performance, is a self-portrait showing the artist’s bare torso, bound with blue strips of trans tape and the words “the middle of nowhere” tattooed across it.
Léann’s practice centres queer and trans experiences, addressing how these communities actively transform and occupy space. Through performance, installation, sculpture, video, and text-based interventions, the artist explores the leaky boundaries of queer and trans desire against the backdrop of a heteronormative, transphobic society. In a constant dialogue with theory and activism, Léann returns to their own body to offer speculative diagrams of belonging and radical resistance.
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Herlihy uses trans* to emphasise the unfixed category of transgender and to refuse the conventional work of easy classification that such terminology usually performs.
Made possible with the generous support of Culture Ireland | Cultúr Éireann.
Bio
Léann Herlihy [1994; they/them] is an artist, researcher and educator based in Dublin.
Their practice is informed by trans*, queer ecological, feminist and abolitionist theoretical frameworks which deploys alternative modalities of expression through an array of mediums including live performance, video, billboards, sculpture, text, workshops and radical pedagogies.
Rigorously and creatively critiquing the positioning of Otherness in a heteronormative society, Léann actively transgresses beyond ‘Other’ as another tick-box option to choose from and moves to explore the generative capacity of collective engagement and resistance when we abolish colonial and capitalist prescriptions of personhood, the body and gender.
Employing a methodology of interdisciplinary collaboration, their practice actively de-centres the author and strives for multiplicity over a single narrative. Through this methodology, time and space become shared communal resources between an array of individuals as the parameters of individualism are resisted through a process of imagining how a collective might begin to live Otherwise.
Originally from Waterford, Léann Herlihy holds an MA in Gender Studies from University College Dublin and a BA in Sculpture, Performance and Spatial Awareness from the University of Arts Poznań, Poland. Recent solo exhibitions include the middle of nowhere, Project Arts Centre, Dublin [2022]; Beyond Survival School Bus, Dublin Fringe Festival, Dublin [2022]; STUNTMAN, ]performance space[, London [2020]; Trojan Horse, STROBOSKOP Art Space, Warsaw [2019]. Select group exhibitions include The Gleaners Society, 40th EVA International, Limerick [2023]; Reflex Blue, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin [2023]; Slow Sunday, Artsadmin, Toynbee Studios, London [2020];
Léann Herlihy is a lecturer at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. They are the recipient of the Arts Council of Ireland’s Next Generation Artist Award [2022], Visual Arts Bursary [2021; 2023] & Agility Award [2021; 2022] as well as being awarded a Three Year Residency [2024-27] at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.
- Accessibility
Billboard at Abell St and Queen St W
Parking: Limited Street, Underground (Paid)
- Getting There
Billboard at Abell St and Queen St W
TTC: 501 Queen streetcar; 504 King streetcar