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ne of our favourite creative spaces is kicking of
f its late 24/early 25 program with a superb exhibition that brings together a group of young photographers to challenge artistic perspectives on the body in contemporary Irish photography and lens-based media. The featured artists take an expanded view of the social, psychological, and material realities of embodiment – of being a ‘body’ in the world. Through their individual practices, they call into question many fundamental assumptions about how gender, sexuality, and selfhood are manifested in and through the body. As an exhibition, Skin / Deep argues for a reconsideration of those bodily experiences that have long been regarded as marginal, and for the means to address them. Exhibition curator Darren Campion says that “Skin / Deep is an exhibition about the different ways people experience and understand their bodies, which is determined largely by the society we live in. The artists in the exhibition use their own lived experiences to call into question many of the social assumptions we have around bodies, to show there is no real norm, no ideal, just different ways of being.” One of the artists, Pradeep Mahadeshwar, says that “Living in contemporary Ireland that claims to offer a ‘safe space’ for LGBTQIA+ individuals, and for those who were not born in Ireland and do not have the ‘Irishness’ body aesthetics, it is often a struggle for displaced queer voices like mine to be heard. The set sexual stereotypes of Vera Ryklova 25