ABSTRACT
The situation of women in Ireland, where contraception was banned until 1980 and then liberalised successively in 1985 and 1993, where divorce became legal only in 1995, and where abortion remained fiercely restricted until the historic 2018 referendum, has spurred many women artists to challenge the status quo inherited from the nationalist period. The State and the Church had imprisoned women in compulsory motherhood and imposed a taboo on pregnancy and sexuality. In this context, art proved a tool for resistance and empowerment. Through painting, sculpture, and performance, some artists have recorporealised both womanhood and motherhood. While women had been allegorised as Irish Madonnas, by reappropriating representations of motherhood and impersonating, embodying, or incorporating them, artists put to fore intersubjectivity and empathy, thereby resisting the silence that surrounded sexuality and abortion. However, disentangling motherhood from Irishness has been a long battle.
