Overseas

Returning to the continent my family emigrated from has elicited weighty feelings amongst us, as my parents moved from Europe to the US and I moved from the US to Europe. Living outside of both the countries where I have citizenships has enabled me to examine how culture is altered and maintained through migration.

Taking on an additional nationality has been a complex experience, amplified by being based in two hostlands—Germany and England. As a first-generation American, and relatively new Irish citizen who only lived in the country for a short while, my series Overseas features the parallels between pastoral Leitrim and urban New York, and my more unconventional interpretations of Irishness as a plural outsider citizen based in Berlin and Bristol.

Through angles of place and generation, I show a personal reflection of changing Irish culture within my family. Specifically through my family’s ancestral home in the least populated county in Ireland, my parents’ immigrant identity in the most populated city in the US, and my current life with roots in multiple European countries. I show shifts in lifestyles prompted by immigration and era, while celebrating the hybridity that comes with being multilocal across many countries. Overseas explores the evolving fluidity of Irish culture in my family as we live internationally.