LONDON — This previous March 8, on Worldwide Girls’s Day, an 82-year-old alchemical vulva boarded the London Tube to protest in entrance of parliament. Her title is Growler, and she or he is portrayed by Irish artist-activist Dee Mulrooney carrying flowing purple and pink robes and hoods. That very same day, she shared a brand new tune, “Free Síle na Giġ,” set to the melody of the Irish nursery rhyme Dílín O Deamhas and calling for the repatriation of a Síle na Giġ statue that’s at the moment held within the British Museum. Within the piece, launched by the unbiased community-focused document label Ómós Data, Growler urged the museum to return the dwelling ancestor again to its Irish homeland, from the place it was stolen within the 1860s.
Síle na Giġ — also referred to as Sheela Na Gig — are carved figures distinguished by massive protruding labia lips typically held open by the sculpture’s palms. They adorned the cornerstones and tympanums of church buildings throughout Eire and had been generally even included into architectural designs. Some students say that they symbolize a pre-Christian goddess, whereas others argue that they’re fertility symbols of amulets meant to guard in opposition to evil.
An instance of a Sheela Na Gig corbel exterior of the Church of St. Mary and St. David at Kilpeck, Herefordshire (photograph through Getty Pictures)
Though these carvings, courting between the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, survived the Roman occupation of Britain and Christianity’s violent arrival, they had been largely torn off church buildings within the seventeenth and 18th centuries. Some had been saved and included into public partitions, the place they continue to be in the present day, whereas others are in museum collections, as is the case of the Síle na Giġ on the British Museum.
Discovered among the many stays of the derelict Chloran Fort in Westmeath, this specific statue was taken by Sir Benjamin James Chapman, who owned the property, and made its approach to British collector George Witt. From 1860, when Witt donated it to the British Museum, the Síle na Giġ sat within the basement for over 150 years, largely uncatalogued and hidden away till it was included within the British Museum and La Caixa Basis’s joint exhibition Revered and Feared: Female Energy in Artwork and Beliefs in 2024.
Growler protesting for the repatriation of the Síle na Gig again to Eire in entrance of the British Museum (photograph by Richie Heffernan, courtesy the artist)
Mulrooney, who first started demonstrating within the streets of Berlin, the place she lives, through the COVID-19 pandemic, traveled to see the sculpture in February. The artist has been fascinated by Síle na Giġ ever since she started her activism as Growler, who is called after a slang time period for “vulva” used within the Northside of Dublin. She began working with the Merseyside-based arts group Coronary heart of Glass, which sponsored Growler to go to Síle na Giġ on the British Museum. For Mulrooney, “this is part of the pilgrimage.”
“She’s an eternal pilgrim because there’s no fixed destination,” she stated. In different phrases, the venture gained’t finish with the repatriation of this Síle na Giġ.
However when Mulrooney, as Growler, arrived on the British Museum, the Síle na Giġ was out on show in Spain, so she traveled to see her. The artist was deeply disturbed by what little context surrounded the gathering of feminine religious symbols at Caixa Discussion board in Madrid. Regardless of panels indicating that many think about the Síle na Giġ a dwelling ancestor, there was no recognition that the sculpture, together with many objects on show, had been stolen. The artist additionally stated she was prohibited from coming into the gallery house in her Growler apparel.
“It’s mad that we couldn’t make that decision as women ourselves to invite a representative of the Mother of God in to talk about a kidnapped ancestor,” Growler stated.
The Caixa Discussion board and the British Museum haven’t responded to Hyperallergic‘s requests for comment.
So on International Women’s Day, Growler debuted her tune set to a joyous Irish tune that each main scholar in Eire is aware of, calling for Síle na Giġ’s return.
“It’s using human levity to talk about something that is really quite dark,” Mulrooney defined a few video she posted on Instagram, exhibiting Growler on the steps of the British Museum.
Her tune didn’t simply name for atonement for a dwelling ancestor, but additionally affirmed pressing human rights as entry to abortion is beneath assault and gender-based violence stays outstanding in Eire and the USA.
“It’s not about a stone sculpture that fell off a church in the 1860s,” Mulrooney stated. “It’s way deeper than that, she’s a symbol for female sovereignty.”
