As I follow the gentle bends in the road on my way to Skibbereen, I feel energised. The sun is beaming, the fields are lush, and soft hills form a gentle green sea around me. Trips down west are always a ‘coming home’ in a way for me. I grew up in the countryside of Cork, and I often find myself craving the rural landscape when I’ve been enveloped for too long by the cityscape.

I’m on my way to meet Maitiú Mac Cárthaigh, an emerging artist currently on residency at the Uillinn Arts Centre. They greet me warmly outside, echoing my verbal affirmations of the glorious weather we’re having. They’re dressed in dark denim cargo pants, a tucked in black t-shirt, and Doc Martens’. Their red hair is cut short with hints of curls forming around the edges. Not so long ago they might have stood out in this rural setting, but now in the ever-changing and increasingly artist-populated West Cork towns, they fit in with this new backdrop.

We make small talk about our rural upbringings as they lead me to their studio, the classic white box that exhibition goers or fellow studio-based artists might recognise. It’s far colder than the sunny day outside, but Maitiú’s work instantly evokes the landscape we have just isolated ourselves from. The smell of soil from their dirt-based screen printing, the artificial insemination gloves hanging around the room, the bright orange ropes used to suspend their work. Their table displays a scattered still life of their working process: a tub of varnish, off-cuts of wood, a measuring tape, gloves, screws, speakers, an old tub of hummus and a recently opened bag of Stone Valley coffee grounds. Covering most of one wall is a series of asemic drawings created from audio recordings of ‘keenings’ that Maitiú is working on. The white paper is marked with black lines that swirl and break and form jagged angles as they travel from one side to the other. Around the studio are a series of brown translucent pieces of material, reminiscent of skin, that Maitiú explains are pieces of “bio-leather” they have created from gelatine and sexual lubricant. We sit and talk in this space, surrounded by their work.

Maitiú grew up in Ballinascarty, a small village outside Clonakilty, as the “eldest queer son of a pig farmer.” However the farm burnt down when Maitiú was young, putting an end to the standard line of patrilineal inheritance. “It was a comical tragedy of Shakespearean proportion, I will never inherit the farm that I was probably never going to inherit anyway.”

It’s clear from Maitiú’s work that the rural is an essential component of their practice. Almost their entire body of work evokes the landscape and agriculture. They describe rurality as always being the “starting point” in their practice, and as a “method and realm to create things”. They have a personal connection to the land, but they speak articulately about the social and political discourses around agriculture and rurality. We discussed how rurality and agriculture are an essential part of everyone’s lives, even if they feel completely detached from it or don’t recognise it.

“Seeing rural land change from a place of supposed stagnation to a place that's heavily green-washed now, makes me very anxious. I read something once from the Radical Faeries that kind of still irks me today, because I can't really figure out how I feel about it. And it's culturally and say systematically, who feeds who? The urban or the rural? And the Radical Fairies kind of left the idea, that unfortunately it is now, that the rural exists only to feed the cities. It's become very binary, not in actuality, maybe just in presentation. That was in the 70s and the 80s, but now you have the green-washing coming back and counter-urbanism. So that's where the rural and say, queer and hopefully radical in some way, thought about reassessing our cultural production come in. It’s this idea of perception versus actuality.”

The work Maitiú is developing while on residency in the Uillinn addresses what they call “post-productivist agriculture” and its effects. “Like how artificial insemination is just, weird fucked up animal rape, and how the agricultural system we have does not actually do anything to bring us closer to the ecological, it just continues the superiority of man.” They explained how they view themselves as assuming a role as the “queer farmer,” and create different modes of production which they view as unproductive because they don't actually produce anything. Through this material experimentation with AI gloves and creating bio-leathers, they address animal husbandry and artificial insemination.

Maitiú is developing this body of work alongside another ongoing project exploring queer loneliness, performativity, and taxonomy. “It became about how queer people create new lines of exclusion in a group. That involves a case study which deals with the banality of why we write so much about like, small q, big Q, queer or how pervasive whiteness is in the queer community, and it's kind of seen as this unacknowledged thing, and people prefer it that way, because it benefits whiteness and heterodominant culture.”

This work involves a series of ‘keenings’ performed by queer participants which Maitiú recorded. They are using these voices to create a soundscape to explore these themes, and the isolating experience of struggling to find one’s place. “This idea that you're boxed off so much that it is quite a lonely experience because you can't fit the bill of what's been prescribed to you.” In addition to sound, this body of work involves video, text, and some of the bio-leather Maitiú has developed.

Although these works will be presented as two separate exhibitions, Maitiú views the work as interconnected. “The two exist together, as I see the method as being the wandering farmer. So for me, the context in which queer loneliness and isolation is set and materially inspired by, is rurality.” The work Maitiú is developing over the course of their residency will be exhibited at their upcoming solo show in September in the Triskel Arts Centre.

Our conversation drifts to what it means to them to be on residency in West Cork. After growing up in Ballinascarthy, they completed their BA Fine Art in Cork City, and moved to The Hague where they graduated in 2023 from the Royal Academy of Art with an MA in Artistic Research. They have been living in the Netherlands for the last 4 years, continuing to make work about rurality while in a much different landscape, cityscape, and culture.

“There is something interesting about being invited back and being like welcomed to the point of – I was the person chosen to get funding to come back to do this queer art. It says to me, it's very obvious that, West Cork has heavily changed. Almost to the point that I don't know if I consider where I'm from in West Cork very rural anymore.  It’s interesting personally and politically.”

When asked about the future, Maitiú informs me of their plan to start a PHD in Galway this coming September. “It will be a blended project, in that it'll be research led, but with creative outputs, such as, a fictional artist novel. And I'm going into it hoping that I can avoid just creating more research about queer rurality that is just housed inside institutions.” They explained that accessing information and academic work is a problem they have faced throughout the research they conducted for their art practice. They commented that institutions don’t make work accessible, and so they hope to do that with their PHD.

They also plan to create research about queer people outside the urban and those traditionally represented.  “I want to do it because I feel like this research, it doesn't exist. A lot of research and queer research in Ireland only focuses on the city and gay and lesbians. It doesn't actually talk about queerness outside of those spaces and those forms and presentations.”