Archetype is a new site-specific installation exploring the complex relationship between motherhood and bereavement, and the often hyper-ridiculous media representations of female grief and ‘hysteria’. This multi-channel video piece sits alongside a specially commissioned text by critic and writer Stephanie McBride.

Accompanying Archetype is Uchronia, a series of real and alternate self-portraits examining life’s pivotal moments and how decisions, accidents and circumstances change us. Both works invite questions on free will, fate and predestination. While Archetype investigates the tropes and stereotypes of the unhinged female in the wake of child-loss, and the inherent representation of an inevitable fall into madness, Uchronia looks at what would happen if divergent paths had been taken. Arising from the death of the artist’s son in 2000 and the subsequent birth of a surviving child, these works share themes of shame and regret layered with unexpected paths of humour and survival. Together they question what we could and would become. Do we have the power to shift our own narratives?

Sinead McDonald is a Dublin based artist and media lecturer. A graduate of the Art in the Digital World Fine Art Masters at the National College of Art and Design, and programme leader on the Masters in Media and Digital Arts at IT Tallaght, her research and practice focuses on implicit narratives in images of people, and the creation of identity. Her work incorporates new technologies; digital production, web based art and physical computing, alongside photography, video, and immersive theatre performance. Recent trajectories explore the sciences and collaborative practice, and how using different disciplines help navigate and illuminate difficult and taboo subjects. She is interested in how technologies and sciences old and new affect and challenge our perceptions, allow us to tell stories, and, ultimately, explore the most human of desires.