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ARTSDESK FRESH AND FAMILIAR TERRAIN The Map, a mo
numental textile sculpture, represents the suffering of Irish women throughout the ages and is the second exhibition in the Magdalene Series at Rua Red. words Tom Lordan photo Ros Kavanagh The first thing that strikes you as you walk into the exhibition at Rua Red is the scale of the artwork. The dimensions of Alice Maher and Rachel Fallon’s collaborative project are not listed in the exhibition materials, but if I had to guess, I would say that The Map is about four metres high and six metres wide. It is a monumental work of art, rising far above the audience’s eyeline, and is easily twice the height of your average exhibition visitor. Its size is facilitated and accentuated by Rua Red’s capacious gallery space, shrouded in darkness, which invites the spectator to walk around and contemplate the powerfully illuminated artwork from many perspectives. Given the ample surroundings of the room, you are permitted to concentrate on the artwork without getting distracted by other visitors or worrying that your movement will block someone else. This room is a necessity, because The Map demands your undivided attention. It is a hybrid artwork, equal parts tapestry, sculpture and mural. Maher and Fallon’s piece is one in a series commissioned by the gallery to explore the cultural, theological and political relevance of the Christian figure of Mary Magdalene, who features in all four Gospels of the New Testament as a follower of Jesus Christ, and appears at both his crucifixion and the empty tomb after his resurrection. Magdalene’s role in the spiritual doxa of the Catholic Church is highly contentious. The prominence of her stature in the Christian pantheon was undermined by Pope Gregory in the 6th century, who made her synonymous with the prostitute that washes Jesus’ feet, despite the fact that nothing in the texts substantiates this connection. Gregory’s institutional misogyny is at odds with the Gnostic Christian tradition which, in texts like the Gospel of Thomas, portrays her as one of Jesus Christ’s most valued apostles, and often alludes to their romantic relationship. In Ireland, of course, Magdalene is perhaps most widely associated with the abominated system of Catholic asylums that took her name in the 18th century, designed as workhouses for ‘fallen women’, i.e. single mothers and girls in abject poverty. Maoliosa Boyle was appointed the Executive Director of Rua Red in 2017. The genesis of the Magdalene series comes from her experience as a student in NCAD in the early nineties. “It was around this time that the last Magdalene Laundry in Sean McDermott Street in Dublin was closed,” she recalls, “and as a young single mother myself I was horrified at the fact that women were being institutionalised for being pregnant outside of marriage.” In addition to her awareness of the growing scandal that surrounded the Magdalene Laundries, Maoliosa had started making work “around Mariolatry – the veneration of Mary – and was introduced to the work of the feminist writer Marina Warner… I became interested in the figure of Mary Magdalene because of how she was used to represent the polar opposite of the Virgin. Our image of her and everything that we know about her has been constructed by men. I was interested in the balance created between the two female characters. Dark and light, pure and sinful, heavenly and hellish, virginal and lustful. Mary Magdalene is usually represented as the penitent whore at the bottom of historical paintings, crawling around the floor, wet with tears and sinful. To me, she represented a realness. She was human: she bled, she cried, she sweated, she loved, she had emotion.” Over the next two decades, Maoliosa kept returning to this constellation of ideas, and finally, when she had taken over at Rua Red, she decided that the time was right “to curate an exhibition with artists who would make interrogative work about the conflicted and mysterious figure of the Magdalene.” Although I knew little about the show’s context when I visited the gallery – and I immediately connected with 50