Sian Costello (Ireland)

Sian Costello uses performative self-portraiture, drawing, and the camera obscura, to reevaluate the hidden role of patience in the history of portraiture and figure painting. Her paintings reevaluate the largely uncredited role which the artist’s model has played in the history of art, the depiction of women in the western figurative tradition, and the wider ubiquity of the trivialisation of feminine-perceived labour.

Her current studio practice uses painting, performance and lens-based installation to interrogate the artist-model relationship. She is constantly searching for new forms of image making, digging through art history to revive extinct technologies and obsolete imageries. Within this process, she sees a huge potential for collaboration with other artists, particularly writers and performers, but also object-makers. She has ideas for installations based on gendered interpretations of furniture-making and garment-drafting, both of which seem especially pertinent within the context of MaltFabrikken and the rich history of Danish design. As a resident artist at Malt AIR, she hopes to diversify the ideas and processes behind her work.