Hands of piece
2 hour performance
belfast international festival of performance
2024

‘Hands of Piece' is a performance created in 2018 for Lovely weather (for this time of year), performance day in Cavan Town. The work was a response to the Red Hand of Ulster being an emblem of both unity and division, where one person's Ulster is not the same as another's’. (Ulster is one of four Irish provinces and is divided by the UK border, leaving six counties in Northern Ireland and three in the Republic. I am from Cavan, one of the 3 counties). In the performance 32 red plaster-cast hands are carved down to dust. Originally the clenched fist represented a moment of resistance and of feminist revolt against systems of oppression on the island of Ireland. Revisiting this work in 2024 the red hand has taken on yet another meaning where the bloody hands of genocide haunt us daily. Much more than an emblem of peace the hand is a marker of revolt and resistance, and of uncertainty and volatility.

Images by Aidan O'Neill