Artist Maitiú Mac Cárthaigh, 28 and a native of Ballinascarthy, is at a point in their career where everything is coming up roses and, speaking with The Southern Star at the back of Field’s in Skibbereen earlier in the summer, they admit to not quite knowing if it’s the Catholic guilt getting to them, but either way, who are they to question it?
The artist, coming from a childhood on a pig farm with three brothers, David, Joe, and Rob, has drawn extensively on the agricultural landscape of home for the work.
Maitiú’s work is challenging the idea of the rural nuclear family, and the ‘picture perfect’ green field that is meant to represent the reality of farming to the uninitiated.
The brutal realities, visually represented in the materials used like artificial insemination gloves, give a ‘real’ reflection of the farming life rather than the romanticised version of country living, where sheep live happily alongside their lambs, and no one goes to the abattoir at the end of the day.
Studying in the Crawford Art Gallery, when the students were told to go home and find a space to work in and inhabit many went to their bedrooms, but Maitiú went into the shed, towards spaces that were never ‘done up’, and covered in asbestos. Maitiú wears their rural roots, quite literally, pulling down their tshirt to show a large tattoo of a white Landrace across their shoulders. What did their dad have to say? ‘The ears are wrong!’
‘People are so happy to draw or take photographs of “farming”, but it’s often so far from the reality. You see photos of the lovely green field, but is that what our grandparents knew? It’s considered such a large component of Irish identity, but is it? People take the black and white picture of the shed falling down, and take it back to the city, but it’s not “real”. It’s broader than that’.
From a box, Maitiú takes out a gelatinous material to show to our reporter; it feels soft and malleable. It’s a special biodegradable material, to mimic the swathes and miles of agri plastic on any farm. Another material that is used in the work, are orange elbow-length artificial insemination gloves. In one of the shows, Maitiú had people mimic the act of insemination, wearing the gloves, with binbags and a box in place of the animal.
‘It makes the audience feel less “safe”. Some people have no context; they thought the AI gloves were a fashion statement. It’s stopping that over-sentimentalisation of country life’.
Other materials they use are long co-op receipts, another one of those things that is immediately recognisable to anyone in the country, but alien outside of that. All these materials are common household objects to the Irish farmer, and are practical too; Maitiú practices that idea, that country boys ‘make do’.
The family farm was destroyed in a fire when Maitiú was three or four, meaning that for them, the question of inheritance was gone.
‘We laugh about it around the kitchen table. The running joke is, I’m the eldest son, so if it had been left to me I’d have been a gay farmer with an organic pig farm! If I went back, it wouldn’t be farmed the way my father did. I’d look less at extractive purposes, however they come.’
Another element Maitiú considers in their art, is the question of how rural identity is thought of. In farming literature, in posters, and in dialogue, it is always the heterosexual husband and wife with their children who are shown, whereas the reality is that the rural and farming population is every bit as diverse as society at large. Visibility is about more than just swapping out one happy family for another.
‘If we’re slotting in a different family experience [rather than the man-woman couple] it’s great for visibility, but what would a queer farm look like if we just swapped out the nuclear family? What does it look like, this idea of the gay son coming back to find a partner and continue the patro-lineal system?’
Maitiú focuses heavily on the realities of rural living, and how different it is from the pretty aesthetic, or ‘cottage-core’, visual of living in the sticks. Making future plans with partner Liam, Maitiú doesn’t forget the real commitment that living rurally commands.
‘They never invented the five-day pig, and I have great respect for animals. County living is kind of amazing, really; like, it’s a huge thing when the shop runs out of something. So how do you live like that, and make it more sustainable?’
‘People are moving out of cities to the countryside – a re-ruralisation’ , but there’s a danger that we’ll go back to the land, without the understanding of the extractive nature of farming. You can’t move out of the city to the country without living in it; I feel in Ireland, “rural” becomes part of your existence’.
While “cottage core” – an aesthetic, ‘cute’ vision of farming and rural life – can be welcome, says Maitiú, it does raise the question if the current ‘green’ practices are really eco-friendly, rather than the more cyclical processes of a century ago. Referencing the book, Men Who Eat Ringforts, which claims that with ‘increasing regularity, the Irish state has sanctioned the destruction of ringforts as part of motorway schemes and infrastructural development. How can we understand a nation hell-bent on the demolition of its own history for the expedient delivery of perceived notions of progress?’
‘We’re cutting off the nose of Irish culture to sustain this romanticised view’ continues Maitiú.
‘We have this dichotomy of intense agricultural practices, but next door you have people living the “cottagecore” life. I don’t think there’s any harm in this though; even if it’s just growing herbs on a windowsill. If you understand it, it can be a really good starting point. A field is not a natural thing, nor a ditch, and if cottage core is getting us there, it’s good’.
Maitiú is currently in residence in The Triskel in the city, with a different body of work that looks at the myth, that ‘the gay son or daughter went to London’.
Of course, not all did and the country is peppered with people who hid their identity, or continue to do so. This is usually softly acknowledgement: the ‘special friend’ in the death notice, or the ‘lifelong friend’.
‘When I was young I thought, where is everyone queer? Are they all up in the city? I will say that people look at queer lives and think, “Oh it must be so hard” but it’s only ever added to it for me. “Coming out” is something we have to do, but there’s a whole life without it and besides it’.
Maitiú’s work can be enjoyed at The Triskel until September 28th; their work has already been purchased by the OPW (Office of Public Works) that forms part of their Collection. They have also exhibited in the Uillinn Centre in Skibbereen in this last year, and was this year’s recipient of the 2025 Emerging Visual Artist Award.
