Helena Walsh - Live Art and Video Performance

Invisible Stains Project

The Invisible Stains project includes a video performance (2008) and a live durational performance (2010). It is an active dedication to all the women who resided in Ireland's Magdalene Laundries. The Magdalene Laundries were for-profit Catholic convent workhouses that ran industrial laundries, ten of which continued operating throughout twentieth century Ireland with the last one ceasing operation in 1996. Following Irish independence in 1922 these institutions increasingly became a depository for women who were considered a threat to the morality of Irish society, such as unmarried mothers. Women placed within these compounds were forced to work unwaged in the industrial laundries. This work, they were told, would restore their purity.

This project developed in protest at the Irish State's shameful abdication of responsibility of it's role in sustaining Ireland's Magdalene Laundries, in particular, its failure to date to issue an apology and its unwillingness to implement a Redress Scheme for the survivors of the Magdalene Laundries. Following recommendations from the UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) the Irish government announced on 14th of June 2011 that it will undertake an independently chaired inquiry into Ireland's Magdalene Laundries. This also prompted the four religious orders who ran the Magdalene Laundries to make available their records which they had withheld from the public, including women who wished to trace children they had been separated from within the laundry system. Noting the existence of the Magdalene Laundries as a disturbing indictment of why women's bodies should not be relinquished to State control, this performance also protests the continual moral regulation of female reproductive autonomy through the remaining ban on abortion in the Irish Republic.



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Invisible Stains Project The Invisible Stains project includes a video performance (2008) and a live durational performance (2010). It is an active dedication to all the women who resided in Ireland's Magdalene Laundries. The Magdalene Laundries were for-profit Catholic convent workhouses that ran industrial laundries, ten of which continued operating throughout twentieth century Ireland with the last one ceasing operation in 1996. Following Irish independence in 1922 these institutions increasingly became a depository for women who were considered a threat to the morality of Irish society, such as unmarried mothers. Women placed within these compounds were forced to work unwaged in the industrial laundries. This work, they were told, would restore their purity. This project developed in protest at the Irish State's shameful abdication of responsibility of it's role in sustaining Ireland's Magdalene Laundries, in particular, its failure to date to issue an apology and its unwillingness to implement a Redress Scheme for the survivors of the Magdalene Laundries. Following recommendations from the UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) the Irish government announced on 14th of June 2011 that it will undertake an independently chaired inquiry into Ireland's Magdalene Laundries. This also prompted the four religious orders who ran the Magdalene Laundries to make available their records which they had withheld from the public, including women who wished to trace children they had been separated from within the laundry system. Noting the existence of the Magdalene Laundries as a disturbing indictment of why women's bodies should not be relinquished to State control, this performance also protests the continual moral regulation of female reproductive autonomy through the remaining ban on abortion in the Irish Republic.