Tyler Eash (*1988, Táisidam/Marysville, Turtle Island/USA, lives and works in California) is working in a post-disciplinary fashion, using performance, sculpture, drawing, painting, film, music and poetry as means to embody their modes of being. Built in response to the removal of one’s own history, ancestral culture, and sense of self, their work engages the medium of identity to express our inherent imaginations. It employs the body as an avatar to represent the desires of a post-capitalist, post-colonial, post-gender self, becoming an interface between a queer rural artist of the Indigenous American and Irish diasporas and the Anglo-colonial realms of high culture.

The work “Sànodim / Behind the Fire” consists of various indigenous materials and layers of found materials painted over with oil paint, chrome, and color-changing automotive paint. The work is autobiographical and refers to Eash’s dual indigenous and European identity. “Angel / Kàkkinim #8” consists of several layers of sheep and lambskin, remnants from a former Burberry trench coat factory, and references the figure of a Kàkkini, a benevolent spirit. “Kadíkim / Rain” shows butterflies emerging from a composition of leather, canvas, fabric, mirrors, and beadwork. The work was created in response to the devastating Dixie Fire, which destroyed significant forests in the Maidu homeland.

Laura Ní Fhlaibhín (b. in Ireland, lives and works in London/Ireland) works with materials related to healing, care, and nourishment. Sifting stories, materials and traces associated with memory, Irish myth, narratives of care and the casting of spells, she creates complex but pithy material scenarios through sculpture, drawing, installation, text, and performance. She combines medical tools with organic material to form arrangements that reference modern Irish life as well as sanitized medicinal environments. Her assemblages often function as a gesture or ritual of care.

The work “Ghost rail” acts as a portal through which ghost horses can safely enter and exit our world. It reflects the relationship between the artist’s cousin, a teenager with developmental delays, and her therapy horse. The work becomes a silent invitation to create a connection between species through care, trust, and shared space. The work “Caltra” consists of a salt lick formed by the horse Caltra from equine therapy with people in need of care. The ash tree has long been considered a protective tree in Irish folklore. Thus, the work traces a delicate network of interdependence and shared vulnerability between species and states of survival. The artist’s paper works feature abstract salt drawings and convey a nourishing, speculative world for ghost horses, in a gesture of care for their role as caregivers.