Mariette Feeney
Mariette Feeney is an artist and designer currently living and working in Dublin. They moved from the UK to Ireland in 2013 to live and study and graduated from TUD with a degree in Furniture Design, which informs much of their work.
Mariette’s work explores and challenges the concept of Utopia and uses scultpure to ask questions and provoke conversations about the world we want to live in: what do we take pleasure in, what are we proud of, and what is important to us? They aim to centre the personal, small, and often overlooked pleasures of everyday life in answer to these larger questions, and through their sculpture they try to give physical form to the idea that in order to do good work in the world, we must all have a place of retreat and peace.
Mariette is the recipient of We Only Want the Earths’ first residency award of 2021.
Instagram: @6thcentury
Instagram: @QueerUtopiaProject
Twitter: @6thcentury
Email: marieoliviafeeney@gmail.com
A4 Sounds Residency: QUEER UTOPIA
Building on previous projects exploring the theme Utopia, Mariette will delve into the idea of ‘building utopia’ through physical and digital forms. This work will center queer voices, and ask the question: in our new world, what will we keep?
Our world is in upheaval, we face an existential threat both in terms of radical and rapid environmental change, in terms of ever-increasing violent political extremism on the far right, and a government that seems to work against our interests at every turn. A common response to these threats has been anger, not the sort of anger that dissolves us or makes us despair, though that is certainly sometimes a facet of it, but anger that solidifies us, and often acts to burnish our ideas about what needs to change in order for us to be able to exist in the world. As we live in the world today, asking ourselves and our community what we want to be free of, the work created during this residency will engage with queer pleasure, fun, love, joy, friendship, and peace, encouraging a response to the question: what will we keep?
The work made during this residency will revolve around sculptural forms intended for the display of treasured or precious objects, meant to gently encourage the viewer to consider the way they curate their own space, as a step towards considering what they treasure -or dislike- about the world they occupy. A small range of sculptural display pieces will be made and subsequently gifted to those who want to invite them into their space and the pieces will be photographed and documented along with the items that their new owners choose to display or feature, as a way to center a variety of queer experiences, interests, and values.
Previous Work
Always Coming Home; Building Blocks for a Utopia
Intended for the display of precious, special belongings, these sculptural furniture pieces aimed to provoke a response to the question “what is important?” by encouraging the viewer to start small, to think about treasured items, and beyond that to think about the way they curate their own space, what they choose to keep around them and what they choose to keep out of sight.
