Kira O'Reilly

Kira O’Reilly (b. 1967) is an Irish artist currently based between Finland and Ireland. Her practice uses multiple media including performance art, installation, sculpture, biotechnical practices and writing which consider speculative reconfigurations around The Body in its most expanded sense. She makes, writes, teaches, mentors and collaborates with humans, technologies and non-humans of numerous divergences.

The origins of her artistic work lie in the materiality and mutability of sculpture meeting radical feminist performance art as it emerged from the confluence of visual arts, experimental performance, time based art, media art, subcultures, and body politics in Europe the early ‘90s. She has worked in the biological arts with its implicit biopolitics, and extension of bodily relations as they manifest in ecological considerations, and other than human environments. She has exhibited widely internationally, most recently at the fourth edition of Bangkok Art Biennale 2024.

The monograph Kira O’Reilly: Untitled (Bodies), edited by Harriet Curtis and Martin Hargreaves was published in 2017. A member of Bioart Society since 2016, she served on the board and co-edited its award winning decennial publication, Art as we Don’t Know it, Aalto Art Books, 2020.

 

Image: inthewrongplaceness, 2009. Photographic print. Photo credit: Axel Heise