Arranged Mirage
Amna Walayat & Tina Whelan
5 June – 27 June
Opening event Wednesday 4 June, 6pm
Studio 12, Backwater Artists Group, Wandesford Quay, Cork
Tuesday to Friday, 10am – 5pm.
Arranged Mirage is a two-person exhibition featuring ambitious new works by studio members of Backwater Artists Group, Amna Walayat and Tina Whelan.
Since first meeting at Backwater Artists Group, Walayat and Whelan have engaged in collaborative learning process, through shared dialogue and exchange. Their first collaboration culminated in the exhibition Songs from a Last Paradise (2024). Arranged Mirage marks their second collaboration, expanding on their research into feminism, across the intersecting terrains of religion, culture, myth, and social norms. Over the past two years, shared dialogue has informed their use of materials, methods, and a symbolic language, which is rooted in their contrasting cultural backgrounds. Throughout their collaborations, Walayat and Whelan celebrate both their differences and their togetherness.
Taking the maternal body as her starting point, Whelan draws on her lived experience, of the evolving relationship between religion and women in Irish society. In Faith, a large prayer cabinet, she explores womanhood through devotional imagery, celebrating the transformative act of birth as a creative and sacred force. In Hope, a short immersive film, the age old cross-cultural practice of a young woman preparing for marriage by filling her trousseau/hope chest, delves into the powerful myths and illusions which shape our worlds.
A Search For A Lost Paradise is a recurring theme in Walayat’s practice. She continues to revisit and expand on this narrative, connecting memory, identity, and the complexities of belonging. Symbolism and motifs of traditional Indo-Persian painting remain central to her practice, whilst she evolves her technical approach and she experiments with colour and material processes, in this exhibition. With these developments, she deepens her engagement with feminist discourse and personal storytelling.
Arranged Mirage invites viewers to reflect on concepts of faith, hope, and belonging, on how these concepts have been shaped by evolving religious, cultural, and secular beliefs, and how we might experience them in the present. With this vision, difference becomes a source of strength, and the mirage, once elusive, transforms into a site of real possibilities.
About the Artists:
Tina Whelan
Tina Whelan is an Irish visual artist, researcher and story-teller. She studied at Belfast School of Art and MTU Crawford College of Art & Design. In 2021, she graduated from the MTU Crawford College of Art & Design, with a Research-Masters on: the impact of national ideology and Catholic ethics on Irish obstetrics.
Her practice began with painting, performance and film. Later work merges paint, print and textiles with sculpture, which has led to her using a wide range of processes to form and express her transdisciplinary, multi-media art.
A recurring theme; looks at how oppression, hurt and memories get passed on through the generations and the complexities of navigating this landscape: particularly in how these manifest in the female body.
Recent exhibitions include Lavit Gallery Annual Exhibition, Cork (2024), Borders; Rua Red Gallery Annual Exhibition, Dublin (2024), Songs from A Lost Paradise, Laneway Gallery, Cork (2024), curated by Monika Sapielak, Deep Time, Punishment Block, Spike Island (2024). Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibitions 191st,192nd and 193rd.
Amna Walayat
“Search of a Lost Paradise” is a recurring theme in my work, returning with new experimentation in Arranged Mirage, created in collaboration with Tina Whelan. This theme reflects a deep human longing—to return to a place of grace, home, or divinity after a fall.
Through symbols like portals, Indo-Persian landscapes, staircases or ladders, stylized figures, suspended moments, and fictional spaces, I explore forms of loss and the desire for renewal. Whether it’s the migrant’s yearning for home, the pursuit of utopia, or humanity’s fall from divinity to mortality—or even immorality, particularly in a feminist context—my work gives form to the universal struggle to reclaim what has been lost. This pursuit is not only about return—it is about redemption and reimagining. It reflects the human drive to reconstruct beauty and meaning in the aftermath of rupture. My work seeks to visualize this enduring search—a journey both personal and collective, mythical and contemporary —for a lost paradise.
I am a Cork-based visual artist of Pakistani origin, working through Indo-Persian motifs and symbolic language to explore identity, displacement, and cultural duality. I work from Backwater Artists Studio and am a member of Sample-Studios and Art Nomads. My practice has been shown at EVA International, IMMA, RHA, The Dock, Sirius Arts Centre, and in major venues in Pakistan. My work is part of the Arts Council Collection, and I have received several Arts Council awards. I hold an MA in Art History from UCC and an MA in Fine Arts from Punjab University. Before moving to Ireland, I worked with the Pakistan National Council of the Arts and Alhamra Arts Council, Lahore, Pakistan. I also lead the annual Basant Festival in Ireland, celebrating South Asian identity through community and art.
Photos by Seán Daly