‘The Map’ is a collaborative work by Rachel Fallon and Alice Maher. Along with the accompanying text/ sound work ‘We Are The Map” by Sinéad Gleeson and Stephen Shannon, it originally formed part of ‘The Magdalene Series’, an exhibition program curated and commissioned by MaolÍosa Boyle which sought to consider the historical and cultural figure of Mary Magdalene as a powerful motif for varying explorations of language, agency, autonomy, colonialism, and institutionalization.

Maher and Fallon first met on the Artist’s Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment, as part of the Campaign for Reproductive Rights in Ireland, where they contributed to the making of a set of original street banners which were carried on marches and processions and became synonymous with the success of that ground-breaking social movement. 

‘The Map’ is an extension of this spirit of collective endeavour and a continuation of their interest in mobile forms of art which can communicate to people on many different levels.  Along with this material and historical reference, the artists also brought an interest in cartography into their exploration of the Magdalene in all her societal, mythological and personal meaning.

‘The Map’ (6.50m x 4m) sewn, hand embroidered, embellished, crocheted and painted by both over a three-year period, is a monumental textile sculpture. Approaching the subject through the lens of the feminist cartography, in which the elements of the practice of mapping are used as a device to imagine and re-imagine the life, legacy and mythology of the Magdalene and its impact on women’s lives, they utilised the iconography of renaissance maps and medieval tapestries, as well as the language of Victorian ‘Cartes de Tendre’ and moral schemas such as ‘the Pilgrim's Progress’, to subvert and challenge the very belief systems and power structures that these maps were established to uphold.

With its own continents, winds, currents and constellations, ‘The Map’ draws the viewer in, inviting a reorientation. Its richly worked surface is an epic Mappa Mundi where an alternative topographic and psychic landscape is uncovered.

6.2m x 3.8m - mixed media textile - Rachel Fallon and Alice Maher 2021

installation at Rua Red Gallery, South County Dublin Arts Centre as part of The Magdalene Series

image credit: Ros Kavanagh

Image credit: Ros Kavanagh