Nadine Byrne on sisterhood, inherited materials, and learning to be here now text Natalia Muntean photography Saskia Clarke I knew I wanted to talk to Nadine Byrne as soon as I saw the title of her new show at Saskia Neuman Gallery in Stockholm, and saw an image of one of the pieces that moved me. Mothers and Sisters and Daughters is Byrne’s second solo show with the gallery and is an exploration of relationships that tie us as women. “For years, I worked alone. I felt that I needed that solitude, but something shifted a while ago, and I started wanting to be with people,” she tells me. The building that houses the studio she shares with her architect husband is home to approximately 80 other artists. The day I visited her studio in Stockholm, she was putting the finishing touches on everything before it was packed and sent to the gallery. “I’m not usually this last minute,” she laughs, “I’m still learning how to work while also having a child.” Her interest in digging deeper into these relational chains comes from her own relationships with her mother, her two sisters and more recently, from her becoming a mother herself. Sisterhood, she says, is where it all begins and where it keeps returning. NM: How do you think being a middle sister influenced you?NB: Very much. I grew up most closely with my older sister. She was very influential to me from a young age – showing me things, or me sneaking into her room, going through her records. She was my idol growing up. My sister, my mother and I were kind of tightly knit together. So that relationship, mother, sister, daughter, has been in the background of everything I’ve done somehow. NM: This exhibition marks a shift in your work, from grieving inward to something more relational and outward. What changed?NB: I think I’ve been very open about the grief work; it’s been hard to hide. But it’s more that I want to move away from that conversation. And now, having a daughter, you’re so forced to be here now. I’m happy about being more here now. I’m still very much interested in memories; memories have always been my inspiration. But in my private life, I need to be more present. And my artistic practice mirrors my life, always. So even before I had a child, I had come to that conclusion. I wanted to be here more now. That’s kind of why I shifted towards sisterhood, because that’s present. And then I had a child, so becoming a mother is also now part of the exhibition. NM: The show features photos of your sisters. When you photograph them, are you looking for resemblance or difference?NB: I think I’m interested in the merging of identities. That’s something I’ve been exploring for a while – how sisters can create their own language, how identity starts to blur between them. I made a work two years ago, a commission for Elektronmusikstudion, here in Stockholm, and part of it was a story about three sisters – about how, when their home had disappeared, there were no longer any boundaries between them and their identities started to merge. So that’s kind of also present in the piece called Klotho, Lachesis and Atropos/Deino, Pemphredo and Enyo/Dike, Eunomia and Eirene. The three figures have the same face, but I gave them different features, so they become separate. There’s an elasticity when it comes to sisters. The boundaries are not the same as with other people. You can be treated in ways that no one else would treat you by your sister. And you treat them the same way. Then again, you would do almost anything for each other. But where else do you find that? And that’s actually in the poem scattered amongst some of the works. One of the fragments says: entangled and pulled taut. That is an attempt to describe the relationship. NM: You can see that the poem is there, but you can’t really read it clearly. Was that intentional?NB: Yes, that was intentional. I didn’t want the text to take over the work. I wanted the pieces to have a life of their own without the text defining everything else. And I’m just a fan of things not being too articulated. I have a fragmented visual language. If you want to read it, you have to get very close. NM: What’s the poem about?NB: It’s about being sisters. I was also listening to a lot of music while I made these works, a group called the Roches, from the 70s and 80s. It’s three sisters who sing in harmony, and I was listening to them a lot at the same time as I wrote the poem. NM: The three mythological triads, the Moirai, the Graiai and the Horai, each carry very different energies. What drew you to all three?NB: I came to them by thinking about my own sisters, trying to mirror that. When it comes to sisters or women, the powers are always divided. Three sisters, three different forces. Why? Why have they been split that way? I think perhaps it is just an early account of how sisters work – you have different roles. One is more nurturing, one is the wild one. I find that true in my case, too. NM: Your mother died when you were twenty, and you inherited things from her that you use in your works.NB: I inherited a lot of fabrics and things, and I started working with them quite early. When you clean out an apartment after someone dies, you become acutely aware of how important material objects are for keeping a relationship with someone alive, someone whose bodily presence is gone, but who has left these things behind. You can continue the relationship through the material. And memories are linked to the material, too. I’m very interested in how objects, how costumes, can have this transcendent quality of maintaining
