{"id":24,"date":"2020-06-17T14:34:46","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T14:34:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/caoimhin.xyz\/?page_id=24"},"modified":"2026-08-31T19:17:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T19:17:33","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/caoimhin.xyz\/index.php\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Bio<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Caoimh\u00edn Gaffney is an artist, researcher and writer in Dublin. Gaffney graduated from the Royal College of Art\u2019s MA Photography and Moving Image in 2011 and received their PhD from Ulster University\u2019s School of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences in 2022. Their work is in several state and county collections and their international recognition includes being an UNESCO-Aschberg laureate artist-in-residence at South Korea\u2019s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2024-2025, a national tour of their work was curated by Anna O\u2019Sullivan, from the Butler Gallery to the Highlanes Gallery & Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre. Other solo exhibitions include the Crawford Art Gallery, Block 336 in London, and the Contemporary Art Institute (CAI02) in Sapporo. Their films have screened at FACT Liverpool, Cork Film Festival, Korean Queer Film Festival, the European Media Arts Festival and the London Short Film Festival (receiving the Little White Lies award).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2025, the Butler Gallery published the second monograph of their work, All at Once Collapsing Together<\/em>, featuring photographs, film stills, scripts and printed text pieces. In 2017, their first monography, Unseen By My Open Eyes<\/em>, was published, featuring film scripts and their corresponding translations in Irish, Persian, Korean and Mandarin was published. *Caoimh\u00edn is pronounced like \u201ckwee-veen\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Statement
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Driven by research, my work uses speculative fiction to envision alternative ways of being and worlds with their own logic and possibilities. My image-making practice involves filmmaking and analogue photography, and my writing practice is used to create film scripts, fictional stories, printed texts, sculptures and audio works. These are often without traditional narratives or character arcs, aiming to create an unsettled terrain that reflects the uncomfortable histories, emotions and sensations they discuss. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From their earliest films, Gaffney has worked on refiguring the body politic. The speculative worlds they create make havoc of the dominant institutions that yoke lived experience into conventional and orderly lives. Put another way, Gaffney is drawn to how queers experiment with ways to liberate their selfhood from the identity categories imposed upon them. Along the way, their work has resignified the messy bodies of post-conceptual art, offering a queer aesthetic formed around the visceral capacity to unhitch bodies from the reifying powers of identity that affix us to communities, genders, and the bodies we\u2019re born in.<\/p>Karl Schoonover,<\/a> Professor of Film and Television Studies, Warwick University<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Education<\/summary>\n