Goatherd II & Caim Michorrhiza
Maria McKinney
Artist In Residence UCD College of Science
SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) array chips, woman’s coats, wire, horns from an Old Irish Goat. 150 x 130 cm approximately, 2022
Installation view, Works from the Rural, Linenhall Arts Centre, 2022.
Caim mycorrhiza root blanket. Wool, glass beads, 3D printed biodegradable biopolymer objects, thread.
150 x 260 cm 2021 Installation view, Totem Yokes exhibition, Wexford County Hall, 2021.
In an environment where the unseen (microscopic, atomic, digital, genetic) is becoming ever more manipulable, which in turn affects our relationship to the physical, Maria's work contemplates the unrevealed systems that constitute
our daily reality.
In contemporary society, the branch of knowledge known as genomics has given scientists the true ability to control nature in the future development of animal and plant species, thanks to an understanding of the complex patterns held within the structure of DNA.
Selecting things that already exist in the world, Maria uses a process of manipulation in response to their form, as well as their unseen properties.
In Goatherd II, Maria combines the horns of an Old Irish Goat with a woman's coat covered in hundreds of micro array chips used in genetic coding.
In Caim Mychorrhiza, Maria delved underground, influenced by technical drawings of root systems.
At the same time, her thoughts turned towards the Native American 'skywalkers' who worked to build the skyscrapers of New York from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s and the ceremonial blankets they wore as symbols of connectedness to their lands.
Maria has made her own blanket out of dark blue wool felt, to which she has hand-sewn dozens of 3D-printed mushrooms, with a network of glass-beaded mycelium, in the shape of body or pelt, like a flayed cow (or a crime scene outline).