Spásanna áirithe considers my own highly charged and conflicted relationship to the Irish language, with respect to its status as a minor language, it is often afforded little space or time, dismissed and cast aside. An inflable mat accompanies an audio piece where I speak to my relationship with Irish, as gaeilge. In this work I explored themes surrounding mistranslation and the role language plays into personal and national identity, causing fractured moments of slippage, discomfort and alienation.

Reflecting on Édouard Glissant’s call for the right to opacity, he argued that transparency through over clarification and definition ignores the aspect of self that are difficult to understand or grasp fully. This work acts as a form of resistance to the flattening gaze of language standardisation and the capitalistic tendancy to view that, that is not totally legible and easily categorised as worthless or valueless.