Kian Benson Bailes

Originally from Sligo, Kian Benson Bailes received a BA in Visual Arts Practice from IADT, Dublin in 2016 and currently lives and works in Dublin. Recent multidisciplinary work has examined Ireland’s language and colonial history – as well as craft, folklore and art – to re-evaluate a sense of place and self.

His wide-ranging practice employs sculpture, digital and material collage, musical instruments, ceramics, textiles, woodwork, and live sculptural sound elements to create a complex exploration of rural Ireland, visual language, embodied experiences in landscape, and identity. The practice draws from Irish folklore, mythology, personal history, and queer theory “to interrogate [his] own emotional landscape as a way of reconciling place and self.” Recent exhibitions include Culchie boy, I love you / Grá mo chroí thú, mo chábóigín féin at Project Arts Centre, Dublin; The Gleaners Society, 40th Edition EVA International, Limerick; and Inverts on the castle wall, Perverts in the tall grass below at Custom House Studios and Gallery, Westport. Through queering historical narratives, planned forthcoming work will focus on research into the folklore surrounding the megalithic cairn Teach Cailleach a’Bheara in the Ballygawley Mountains, Sligo. Much of the folklore surrounding the cairn is not well recorded, and it occupies a distinct space amongst the oral histories of the surrounding areas.