As both a professional portrait photographer and curator, my creative journey is layered, textured, and deeply personal. Two recent exhibitions—RITUALS and Foreign Land—brought those layers to the surface, inviting me to inhabit multiple roles: as an exhibiting artist, as a facilitator of community expression, and as a weaver of collective narrative.
RITUALS came first. It was a deeply intimate project, one in which I participated as an exhibiting artist with Liam Duffy and Anna Nagle – both fellow students from LCEFT. My video piece, Tahara: Ritual for the Dead, was the seed of this exhibition and remains a cornerstone of my creative inquiry. Inspired by Jewish mourning rituals, the work reimagines the ancient rite of taharah as an embodied practice of healing. The piece explores the act of preparing oneself—not a body—for burial, symbolically enacting a letting go, a cleansing, and ultimately, a choosing of life. As a self-portrait photographer and performance artist, I drew on breath, water, and ancestral language to build a visual poem that speaks to grief, memory, and spiritual resilience.
At the heart of Tahara is a verse from Deuteronomy 30:19: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore choose life.” This ancient text is not merely a spiritual plea but a daily reckoning—one I inhabit as a Jewish woman, an artist, and an Israeli living in Ireland for the past 18 years. Since the events of October 7th and the escalation of war in Israel-Palestine, I have returned again and again to this question: how do we choose life amidst death? This piece is a meditation, a ritual reimagined—not as an ending, but as a call to be present, open-hearted, and spiritually rooted.
Water plays a profound role in Tahara—a symbol of purification, transition, and connection to the Divine. In Jewish tradition, mayim chayim (living waters) are a place of spiritual communion and restoration. In this piece, water is used not only to release the soul but to honour life itself. The video traverses the sacred terrain between life and death, combining spoken and sung verses from the Song of Songs in Hebrew, English, and Irish.
The creation of Tahara was deeply collaborative: with camera work by Benjamin Santon and Céline Mermier, music composed with Nóirín Ní Riain and Snail Lemley, sound by Shay Leon at Hape Sound Studio, and costume design by Ziva Ellis. As director, editor, and performer, I brought these elements together to hold space for healing and remembrance.
Accompanying the video was a triptych of still self-portraits: Choosing Life, Relics of Death, and Promise of Future—each representing a threshold in the spiritual journey. These photographic works offered a visual meditation on choice, mortality, and spiritual transformation. They were presented alongside works from three other still photographers whose contributions explored personal and cultural rituals through their own lenses, adding depth, diversity, and resonance to the exhibition’s theme.
I am grateful to the Limerick College of FET – Mulgrave Street, and to the extraordinary educators Aine, Clare, and Eoin, and fellow students Anna and Liam, who inspired and supported this journey.
Foreign Land
Curating Foreign Land built on the emotional architecture of RITUALS. This time, I stepped into the dual role of curator and exhibiting artist. The exhibition brought together amateur and professional photographers from East Clare to explore experiences of migration, transformation, and belonging. The “foreign land” could be geographical, emotional, or existential. It was about threshold spaces—the moments we realise we no longer recognise the ground beneath us.
My vision for Foreign Land came from a personal place—a desire to understand what it means to live between identities, to cross into new chapters of life, often without a map. This exhibition was an offering: a way to make those liminal spaces visible, and to invite others into that vulnerable, transformative terrain. I wanted to create an environment where people could recognise their own resilience in the work of others. Where the emotional landscapes of grief, migration, and rediscovery could be honoured and witnessed.
The exhibiting artists brought an extraordinary range of perspectives:
Céline Mermier offered two bluish-toned self-portraits taken in Mountshannon, reflecting a period of deep melancholy and creative reconnection. Her work evokes water as a space of restoration, inviting introspection and emotional surrender. A celebrated photographer originally from France, Céline recently received the title of Photographer of the Year in Dublin.
Greg Dinner, a seasoned writer and screenwriter, contributed a poetic photographic narrative drawn from his novel Fragments. Through curated text and photo-based imagery, Greg explored memory, trauma, and human resilience in conflict zones. Though not a photographer by training, Greg’s storytelling through imagery reveals a deeply emotional and reflective artistic voice.
Michelle Moloney, an amateur photographer and mother of two, captured the haunting serenity of a dense, little-visited East Clare forest. Her landscape and macro photography evokes an otherworldly quiet—a visual meditation on survival and beauty.
Soo Ling Koh, a creative based in Killaloe, used photography as a way to reflect on impermanence, travel, and the emotional release that comes from embracing change. Her reflective work invites viewers into a moment of letting go.
Toma Stena, originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, shared portrait work informed by her background in family photography. Her photographs capture tenderness and emotional depth, especially through the presence of her young daughter Oleksandra, a symbol of hope and continuity amid displacement.
Przemyslaw Andrew Stawarz, a Polish-born dreamer and photography hobbyist, focused on storytelling through spontaneous, emotive captures of daily life, exploring the quiet rituals of presence.
Silwelubuhle Beauty Ncube, a passionate learner and explorer, contributed imagery that reflected her spirited embrace of cultural exchange, adventure, and personal growth.
Alexandra Thompson, a former BBC Picture Publicist turned fine art photographer, contributed abstract nature-focused works designed to soothe the soul and enliven the spirit. Her fascination with water and cloud formations lent the exhibition a sense of movement, power, and serenity.
Each of these voices brought their own sense of ‘foreignness’—whether cultural, emotional, or spiritual—and together we created an exhibition that felt like a constellation of lived experience.
In both projects, I witnessed the transformative power of storytelling through image, ritual, and community. Whether capturing the fleeting stillness of a family portrait, directing a ritual-based video work, or curating others’ visions into a unified whole, my intention remains the same: to hold space for what is tender, raw, and human.
In my broader practice, I work as a family portrait photographer and event photographer across Clare, Galway, and Limerick, always seeking to capture the stories that live in between the posed and the spontaneous. Whether I’m photographing a family in the golden light of East Clare or curating a community exhibition in an urban arts centre, my creative process is rooted in presence, empathy, and a deep listening.
These exhibitions were also made possible through vital partnerships. Foreign Land was supported by Clare County Council’s Integration Team and Clare Local Development Company (CLDC) through the SICAP initiative. It grew from my previous work as Coordinator of Development and Training at East Clare Community Co-operative Society Ltd., where community-led, arts-based engagement is central to everything we do.
Through both my lens and my curatorial voice, I hope to keep creating spaces where transformation is possible—whether it’s on the gallery wall, at the kitchen table, or in the sacred rituals of daily life. These are the stories I love to tell, and the spaces I’m honoured to hold.
