Anamacha Caillte - Lost Souls
Anamacha Caillte
Eileen Fair & Taim Haimet
“Ba cheart gach glór a léamh mar mhonabhair na habhann” a deir Alice Oswald agus muid ag druidim lena dán ar leabhar fhad, Dart. Ag machnamh ar thuiscint fhileata na n-ealaíontóirí Eileen Fair agus Taim Haimet, sileann na focail seo. Leanann Oswald abhainn Dart óna foinse go dtí an fharraige, ag scaoileadh sruth míorúilteach de chainteanna báite a bhain uair amháin le béal stair na habhann seo, ó phóitseálaithe agus oibrithe séarachais go nimfeacha uisce agus curachóirí a báthadh. Tarlaíonn míorúilt den mhéid céanna i saothair Fair agus Haimet. . Cosúil le Oswald, tá an bheirt acu ag sní isteach i gcriosanna sonracha geografacha agus ag scaoileadh saor láithreacht a bhí curtha. Athshamhlaíonn Fair radar talamhthreáiteach; Sroicheann Haimet hidreafón faoi thonnta na farraige. Áit a scarann Fair agus Haimet ó abhainn Oswald, áfach, sna cineálacha suíomhanna ar a ndírítear orthu. Seachas dobharlach a bheith ag gluaiseacht trí shuaimhneas iardheisceart Shasana, tá imní ar an mbeirt ealaíontóir seo, an-imní, le háiteanna crá agus báis, atá luaineach go polaitiúil, gan réiteach spioradálta ná morálta.
De shliocht na Siria, tá nasc fola ag Taim Haimet leis na báid imirceacha atá ag streachailt le tearmainn Eorpacha a bhaint amach. Is iomaí uair a sheas sí ar chladaí na Meánmhara, agus í ag oscailt í féin do na heitiltí éadóchasacha ó chladaí creacha ar an taobh eile, paidreacha na ndaoine a d’fhulaing, murmúirí na ndaoine a báthadh. Thosaigh oidhreacht Éireannach á brú féin isteach i lámh bheag Eileen Fair ina hóige, nuair a thosaigh sí ag ceistiú go hoscailte foirgneamh dorcha ag teannadh go gruama in aghaidh spéir Dé. Teach na mbocht ón naoú haois déag a bhí anseo, iarsma de chóras Dhlí na mBocht Shasana, a d’iompaigh, i mblianta tosaigh an tSaorstáit, isteach i dteach máithreacha agus linbh, ceann amháin de mhórán, ag dlisteanú agus ag normalú na misogine agus an aicmeachais a chruthódh sochaí na hÉireann do ghlúnta eile.
Mar mhic léinn lánfhásta in ATU Gaillimh, bhain an bheirt acu, Fair agus Haimet, Céim Onóracha amach san Ealaín Chomhaimseartha an samhradh seo caite.Cé go raibh a réimsí spéise na mílte óna chéile, ar feadh na mblianta d’obair siad taobh le taobh. Is féidir leis an mbliain tar éis na céime a bheith an-thorthúil do go leor ealaíontóirí, agus is fiú bualadh bos a tabhairt do na gailearaithe a bhaineann leas as an bhfuinneamh seo. Tugann Fair agus Haimet éagsúlachtaí ar a dtaispeántas céime chuig An Gailearaí. Tugadh “Ethereal Playground” ar an gcéad seó de chuid Fair, bhí dealbha ar nós an crandaí bogadaí gan éinne air agus pram bábóige sobhriste ag tacú lena log trom i gcruth nuabheirthe, rud a thugann le fios go suairc ar óige caillte. Is cosúil go bhfuil sruth comhbhá ó chroí ag sreabhadh ó lámha an ealaíontóra seo isteach i ngach dealbh dá cuid, ag tabhairt beocht dá n-anamnacha. Tugtar réada aimsithe éagsúla le chéile le healaíontacht macánta, ag cruthú bailiúcháin talismanacha a thagann isteach inár réimse de na saolta beaga atá ligthe i ndearmad. Le grá deasghnátha, cuireann Last Breath bláthanna íogair bán gypsophila, ar a dtugtar anáil linbh go coitianta, taobh istigh de bhuidéil leanbh, taobh istigh de phota seomra, taobh istigh de chomód ársa, rinneadh é seo am éigin idir na blianta 1890 go 1919, an tréimhse ama a chonaic bunú institiúidí máithreacha agus leanaí na hÉireann. Le deich mbliana anuas, d’iompaigh súile an domhain go mall i dtreo áras máithreacha agus naíonán Naomh Muire i dTuaim, an lá a thosaigh geoifisiceach ag stiúradh frithghearrtha cosúil le lomaire thar na tailte. Bhí an gaireas aisteach seo feistithe le radar a chuardaíonn faoin talamh, ag seoladh tonnta raidió tríd an mbarrithir agus síos go dtí an talamh dorcha. Fuarthas aimhrialtacht san ithir, rud a léirigh gníomhaíocht dhaonna faoin dromchla. Thosaigh súile ag breathnú níos doimhne, ag méadú le huafás nuair a thuig siad go raibh 796 leanbh curtha i seomraí córais séarachais a bhí imithe as feidhm. Tugann píosa meán measctha Eileen Fair “Almost Tangible” cuireadh isteach sa ghailearaí a leagan den ghaireas a chuaigh trí rúin na hithreach seo, cré barántúla ó shuíomh Thuama mar chuid den suiteáin. Ba cheart gach glór a léamh mar mhonabhair na cré.
Ba cheart gach glór a léamh mar mhonabhair na farraige. Tá taispeántas iarchéime Taim Haimet, buaiteoir Ghradam Ealaíne RDS Taylor, agus, sular thaistil sé go Dún na nGall, a taispeánadh in Áras Nua-Ealaíne na hÉireann, bunaithe ar an bhfocal Araibis, Barzakh, rud a chiallaíonn sa chiall litriúil caille nó bac idir dhá rud, gan ligean dóibh bualadh lena chéile. San Ioslam, leathnaíonn an bhrí seo chun talamh na n-anam a chuimsiú, críoch nach féidir teacht uirthi ach amháin trí bhás, a scarann an saol gearr ama seo ón saol síoraí atá ag fanacht ar Lá na hAiséirí. Tá an staid seo a gcaithfidh anamacha dul tríd níos faide ná scóip na súl marfach, ach ina samhlaíocht fhísiúil de Barzakh, cruthaíonn Haimet tairseach trína bhféadfaidh an lucht féachana dul isteach san áit theoranta seo agus iad fós ag análúAg dul isteach sa spás uisciúil seo, feiceann duine amháin dhá éadan díchumtha, achar fada ag scaradh ceann ón cheann eile. Tá aghaidh amháin bainte le cloigeann ar a dhroim (ag luí ar ghrinneall na farraige?), súile dúnta go daingean. Osclaíonn an t-aghaidh ina seasamh a súile, ag nochtadh súile lán-mhothúchán atá fairsing ina léiriú, as a scaipeann deora ró-mhóra in ísle brí. Suíonn an aghaidh atá ag caoineadh seo ar bharr túr de lámha díchorraithe, an iliomad bosa agus méara. Ní féidir leis na lámha seo teacht ar an bpéire maidí rámha atá taobh leis an aghaidh atá ina luí, roimh smig agus mullach an chinn i gcoinne struchtúir cosúil le caighean ina bhfuil an cloigeann seo in airde.
Tá figiúr scáthchruth le go leor lámha atá ag breathnú amach chun farraige i teilgean físe iontach, cuireann gluaiseachtaí aerúla i gcuimhne don lucht féachana go bhfuil siad b'fhéidir ag tabhairt cuairte ar fhearann miotasach. Tá an phian, áfach, fíor, is leis an domhan a bhfuilimid tar éis éirí as chun taithí a fháil ar Barzakh.
Sular chum sí Dart, chaith Alice Oswald dhá bhliain ag taifeadadh comhráite le daoine a chónaíonn agus a oibríonn ar an abhainn. Is éisteoirí Taim Haimet agus Eileen Fair, mar an gcéanna. Ar feadh dhá bhliain, le linn an ama a bhí Barzakh á fhoirmiú, d’oibrigh Haimet go deonach mar ateangaire Araibis d’iarrthóirí tearmainn i nGaillimh, ag aistriú scéalta na ndaoine a rinne trasbhealaí contúirteacha farraige. Críochnaíonn tráchtas cumhachtach Fair, a leagann an bhunchloch do Ethereal Playground, le hagallamh le Catherine Corless, an staraí amaitéarach a d’aimsigh a himscrúduithe gan eagla agus a thug isteach i bhfianaise an domhain na rúin a bhí curtha i dTuaim. Tharla an comhrá seo agus ealaíontóir agus staraí ag siúl tríd an láthair adhlactha le chéile.
Ag filleadh ar dheisceart Shasana, lig dúinn bogadh soir ón Dart i dtreo an pointe a ritheann abhainn eile, an Thames, thar sráidbhaile Cookham. dir 1924 agus 1926, d’oibrigh Stanley Spencer ar a phéinteáil chuimhneacháin, The Resurrection, Cookham. Ar an Lá Deireanach i reilig Cookham, éiríonn Spencer, a chlann agus a chairde, agus roinnt de mhuintir an bhaile, as a n-uaigheanna, a gcoirp aiséirí ag glacadh le teas agus síocháin tráthnóna Bealtaine. Roinnt blianta roimhe sin, phéinteáil Spencer aiséirí eile atá suite i reilig a shráidbhaile dúchais, an ceann seo a thaispeánann iad siúd a d'éirigh as an talamh ag baint úsáide as a leaca uaighe mar thacaí. Ar na clocha seo, ar ndóigh, tá a n-ainmneacha inscríofa. Tá an aiséirí níos déanaí lán de leaca uaighe, na mairbh athbheochana ag comhrá agus ag ligean a scíth i gcoinne a n-ainmneacha chiseáilte.
Cad fúthu súid atá curtha gan ainm? An samhradh seo caite, rinne an tAire Leanaí, Roderic O’Gorman, cur síos ar dhí-adhlacadh coirp as umair séarachais Thuama mar “ceann de na tochailtí fóiréinseacha is casta ar domhan.” Sa Mheánmhuir, meastar go bhfuil níos mó ná 28,000 imirceach tar éis bás a fháil le deich mbliana anuas agus iad ag iarraidh seoladh trasna go dtí áit shábháilte, rud a chruthaigh reilig farraige d’uaigheanna gan ainm. Mar ealaíontóirí tá Eileen Fair agus Taim Haimet ealaíonta ag cruthú atmaisféir uaigneach trína gcuid oibre, agus ba chóir a thabhairt faoi deara nach ag fáscadh taibhsí atá siad, ar bhealach ceomhar. Tá an dá ealaíontóir i mbaol ag gach saol millte. Labhraíonn Fair go suairc ar leanaí a cuireadh “gan dínit an tseirbhíse sochraide, cónra, taifid adhlactha nó aon chruthúnas gur raibh saol gearr neamhchiontach acu.” Smaoiníonn Haimet ar chinniúint na ndaoine a thóg an fharraige léí, gan adhlacadh ná paidreacha, na coirp ag sileadh go deo sa doimhneacht.” In Phenomenology of Perception , a foilsíodh le 1945 a bhí traochta ón gcath, scríobh Maurice Merleau-Ponty “don smaointeoireacht réamh-eolaíoch, trí réad a ainmniú is cúis leis a bheith ann nó é a athrú; Cruthaíonn Dia daoine trína n-ainmniú agus feidhmíonn draíocht orthu trí labhairt orthu.” Tugadh ainm bréagach do bhean ar bith a chuaigh isteach i dtithe na máthar agus na leanaí in Éirinn, chun scannal a sheachaint dá muintir. Is iondúil go bhfuair leanaí a measadh a bheith oiriúnach le haghaidh uchtaithe sloinnte a dtuismitheoirí uchtála. Ag an am céanna bailímid imircigh ina n-ainmfhocail chomhchoiteanna agus ina n-aidiachtaí maslacha – de réir mar a oireann d’uaigheanna móra, tagann siad en masse. I sráidbhaile Great Walsingham i Norfolk timpeall na bliana 1655, nach bhfuil i bhfad ó bhaile an dochtúir agus polaimait Sir Thomas Browne, d'aimsigh grúpa fear a bhí ag tochailt i bpáirc timpeall caoga próca ársa a bhí lán de luaithreach daonna, píosaí cnámha, agus réada sochraide. Spreag an aimsiú seo Browne chun Urne-Buriall a scríobh, a mhachnamh síoraí ar bhás agus ar adhlacadh. I measc a chéad bharúlacha tá gur mhian leis an gcuid is mó a d’imigh “go mbeadh a gcnámha ina luí go compordach agus go mbeadh an talamh éadrom orthu; Fiú ar nós dóchais éirí arís, ní bheadh sé sásta leis an imtheorannú lárnach, nó chomh éadóchasach a gcuid iarsmaí a chur i dtreo is go mbeidís taobh amuigh den aimsiú, agus gan a bheith le feiceáil arís.” Ní mian le haon duine againn a bheith curtha chomh domhain, folaitheach, nó gan ainm sa talamh ionas go mbeimid suite taobh amuigh de dheora an bhrón.
Tá sé ráite ag Alice Oswald nach samhlaíonn sí a saothar mar dhánta ach mar “snoíodóireacht fhuaime.” Ag ullmhú chun Eileen Fair agus Taim Haimet a fhágáil, téann an frása aisteach seo i bhfeidhmAgus iad ag dealbhóireacht le fuaim, baineann an bheirt ealaíontóirí leas as aer an ghailearaí mar ábhar. Ina teilgean físeáin, tá íomhá na fuaimeanna faoi uisce a gabhadh ag hidreafón mogalra, cisealta le nóta míol mór. Cuireann taifeadadh leanaí i gclós súgartha isteach ar shuiteáil radair talamhthreáiteach ar an talamh de chuid Fair, ag scagadh trí shuaitheadh fuaime faoin talamh. Seolann iPod atá i bhfolach torann trí ascalascóp an radair: an iomann, Ave MariaSa Ghailearaí, téann píosaí fuaime ó Chlós Súgartha neamhshaolta isteach i Barzakh, agus a mhalairt. Go bunúsach, meascann sé seo in aon tséis amháin mná agus leanaí de Éireann nach bhfuil an fhad sin uainn, lipéadaithe tite agus diúltaithe, agus faoi réir barbaracht, leis na daoine sin, inniu agus amárach, gafa i tromluí bíseach, ag báthadh díreach amach ónár gcladach.
Tá an réaltacht, a bheag nó a mhór, déanta suas, gréasán casta a cheiltíonn an oiread agus a nochtann sé go minic. Chun an sagart-fhile Gerard Manley Hopkins a athinsint agus é ag machnamh ar an bhfealsamh Duns Scotus na réaltachta, is iad Eileen Fair agus Taim Haimet a bhfuil an-mheas orthu.
- Cornelius Browne
Lost Souls
Eileen Fair & Taim Haimet
“All voices should be read as the river’s mutterings,” signposts Alice Oswald as we approach her book-length poem, Dart. Contemplating the poetic fathoming of artists Eileen Fair and Taim Haimet, these words trickle. Oswald tracks the river Dart from source to sea, freeing a miraculous stream of submerged utterances that belonged once to the mouths of a panoply of this river’s familiars, from poachers and sewage workers to water nymphs and drowned canoeists. A miracle of similar magnitude occurs in the works of Fair and Haimet. Echoing Oswald, both are delving into specific geographic zones and liberating inhumed presences. Fair reimagines ground-penetrating radar; Haimet reaches a hydrophone under the sea waves. Where Fair and Haimet diverge from Oswald’s river, however, lies in the nature of the sites upon which they focus. Rather than a body of water moving through the tranquillity of south-west England, both these artists are concerned, deeply concerned, with loci of torment and death, politically volatile, spiritually and morally unresolved.
Of Syrian descent, Taim Haimet has a blood link to the migrant boats struggling to reach European sanctuaries. She has stood, many times, on the longed-for shores of the Mediterranean, opening herself to the desperate flights from ravaged shores on the opposite side, the prayers of sufferers, the murmurings of the drowned. An Irish inheritance began pressing itself into Eileen Fair’s small hand amid her childhood, when she began questioning openly a dark building looming grimly against God’s sky. This was a nineteenth-century workhouse, a relic of the English Poor Law system, converted, during the teething years of the Free State, into a mother and baby home, one of many, legitimizing and normalizing the misogyny and classism that would shape Irish society for generations to come.
As mature students at ATU Galway, from which both graduated with Honours Degrees in Contemporary Art last summer, Fair and Haimet, although their areas of interest lay many miles and seas apart, for years worked side by side. The year following graduation can prove particularly fertile for many artists, and galleries possessing the speed to harness this energy are worthy of applause. To An Gailearaí, Fair and Haimet bring variations on their degree exhibitions. Fair’s original show bore the title Ethereal Playground, such sculptures as the unoccupied mirrored seesaw and fragile doll’s pram supporting its burdensome newborn-shaped hollow, poignantly suggestive of lost childhoods. A current of profound empathy appears to flow from this artist’s hands into each of her sculptures, animating their spirits. Disparate found objects are brought together with bracing artistry, creating talismanic assemblages that appear to call into our realm of the living little lives long forgotten. With ritualistic tenderness, Last Breath places delicate white gypsophila flowers, known commonly as baby’s breath, inside baby bottles, inside a chamber pot, inside an antique commode, this item made sometime between the years 1890 to 1919, the timespan that saw the formation of the Irish mother and baby institutions. Within the last decade, the eyes of the world were beginning to turn slowly towards St. Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, on the day a geophysicist began guiding a mower-like contraption over the grounds. This curious apparatus was equipped with ground-penetrating radar, sending radio waves through the topsoil and down into the dark earth. Anomalies were discovered in the soil, indicating human activity beneath the surface. Eyes began turning faster, widening in horror over the revelation that 796 babies had been buried in the chambers of a defunct sewerage system. Eileen Fair’s mixed-media piece Almost Tangible invites into the gallery her version of the apparatus that penetrated the secrets of this soil, the installation incorporating authentic earth from the Tuam site. All voices should be read as the soil’s mutterings.
All voices should be read as the sea’s mutterings. Taim Haimet’s graduate exhibition, winner of the prestigious RDS Taylor Art Award, and, prior to travelling to Donegal, shown at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, revolves around the Arabic word, Barzakh, which in the literal sense means a veil or barrier between two things, not allowing them to meet. In Islam, this meaning expands to embrace the land of souls, a territory reachable only through death, separating this short temporal existence from the everlasting life that awaits on the Day of Resurrection. This state through which souls must pass lies beyond the scope of mortal eyes, yet in her visionary imagining of Barzakh, Haimet creates a portal through which viewers might pass into this liminal place while still breathing. Entering this space of watery entombment, one beholds two disembodied faces, a considerable distance separating one from the other. One face belongs to a supine head (resting on the seabed?), eyelids firmly shut. The upright face opens her lids, revealing emotion-filled eyes expansive in their expressiveness, from which over-sized tears spill in hypnotic blues. This weeping face sits atop a tower of disembodied hands, a multitude of palms and digits. These hands cannot reach the pair of oars that flank the recumbent face, afore chin and crown against the cage-like structure inside which this head is held aloft. Airy movements of a many-armed silhouetted figure facing out to sea in a mesmerising video projection, remind viewers that they are perhaps visiting a mythic domain. The pain, however, is real, belonging to the world we have momentarily stepped out of to experience Barzakh.
Before composing Dart, Alice Oswald devoted two years to recording conversations with people who live and work on the river. Taim Haimet and Eileen Fair, likewise, are both listeners. For two years, during which time Barzakh was forming, Haimet volunteered as an Arabic interpreter for asylum seekers in Galway, translating the stories of people who had made perilous sea crossings. Fair’s powerful dissertation, which lays the groundwork for Ethereal Playground, culminates in an interview with Catherine Corless, the amateur historian whose fearless investigations unearthed and carried into the light of the world the secrets that lay buried in Tuam. This conversation was conducted as artist and historian walked through the burial site together.
Returning to the south of England, let us move eastward from the Dart towards the point where another river, the Thames, flows past the village of Cookham. Between 1924 and 1926, Stanley Spencer worked on his monumental painting, The Resurrection, Cookham. On the Last Day in the Cookham churchyard, Spencer, his family and friends, and sundry villagers, rise from their graves, their resurrected bodies absorbing the warmth and peace of a May afternoon. Some years earlier, Spencer had painted another resurrection set in the churchyard of his native village, this one depicting the risen clambering out of the ground using their tombstones as supports. Upon these stones, of course, would be inscribed their names. The later resurrection abounds in tombstones, the revived dead conversing and relaxing against their chiselled names.
What of those buried without names? Last summer, Minister for Children, Roderic O’Gorman, described the eventual exhumation of bodies from the Tuam sewage tanks as “one of the most complex forensic excavations in the world taking place.” In the waters of the Mediterranean, it is estimated that more than 28,000 migrants have perished in the last decade while trying to sail across to safety, creating a sea cemetery of unmarked graves. As artists adept at creating such haunting atmospheres through their work, it should be noted that Eileen Fair and Taim Haimet are not conjuring ghosts, in the vaporous sense. Both artists are impelled by the haecceity of each blighted human life. Fair speaks movingly of babies disposed of “without the dignity of a funeral service, a coffin, burial records or any proof of having lived a short innocent life.” Haimet wonders over the fates of “the ones swallowed by the sea, without burial or prayers, bodies forever drifting in the bottomless depths.” In Phenomenology of Perception, published in war-torn 1945, Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote that “for pre-scientific thinking, naming an object is causing it to exist or changing it; God creates beings by naming them and magic operates upon them by speaking of them.” Women entering mother and baby homes in Ireland, to avoid scandalizing their families, were given assumed names. Babies deemed suitable for adoption usually acquired the surnames of their adoptive parents. Migrants, meanwhile, we gather into collective nouns and abusive adjectives – as befits mass graves, they come en masse. In the village of Great Walsingham in Norfolk around 1655, not far from the home of physician and polymath Sir Thomas Browne, a group of men digging in a rural field unearthed around fifty ancient urns full of human ashes, pieces of bones, and funerary objects. This discovery prompted Browne to write Urne-Buriall, his timeless meditation on mortality and burial. Among his first observations is that most departed “have wished that their bones might lie soft, and the earth be light upon them; Even such as hope to rise again, would not be content with centrall internment, or so desperately to place their reliques as to lie beyond discovery, and in no way to be seen again.” None of us wish to be buried so deeply, clandestinely, or namelessly into the Earth that we lie beyond the reach of a mourner’s tears.
Alice Oswald has said that she envisages her works not as poems so much as “sound carvings.” Preparing to take my leave of Eileen Fair and Taim Haimet, this curious phrase resonates. Sculpting with sound, both artists harness as a material the air of the gallery. In her video projection, Haimet meshes with the image the underwater sounds captured by a hydrophone, layered with a distorted single whale note. A recording of children in a playground haunts Fair’s ground-penetrating radar installation, filtering through a subterranean sound disturbance. A hidden iPod conducts noise through the radar’s oscilloscope: the hymn, Ave Maria. In An Gailearaí, sound carvings from Ethereal Playground wash into Barzakh, and vice versa. Effectively, this merges into a single melody the women and children of not so long ago Ireland, labelled fallen and rejects, and subjected to barbarity, with those people, today and tomorrow, trapped in spiralling nightmares, drowning just off our shores.
Reality, to varying degrees, is a construct, an intricate web often concealing as much as it reveals. To paraphrase priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins reflecting upon philosopher Duns Scotus, of reality, both Eileen Fair and Taim Haimet are rarest-veined unravellers.
- Cornelius Browne