Martina Hynan

Martina Hynan is an artist researcher based in Ennis, Co. Clare. Her practice examines the rupture between birth and place through a feminist environmental humanities lens, contributing to broader understandings of natality; the conditions, relationships, and forms of life through which new beings come into the world. She explores this expanded understanding of natality through her eco-social practice. Her practice explores our relationships with plants, the environment, and the wider living world. Through an attentiveness to plant life, she considers interdependence, care, and the ways in which we come to understand what it means to be born into and belong to place.

Martina holds a PhD from University of Galway, an M.Phil in Women’s Studies from Trinity College Dublin and a BA (Hons) in Visual Art, University of Wales. She is the first artist to complete a research-with-art practice PhD with the Centre for Irish Studies, University of Galway (2018-2023).

She was curator/artist/activist with the Elephant Collective (2015-2019), community activists who successfully campaigned for new legislation to secure mandatory inquests for all maternal deaths in Ireland. Central to this campaign was a multimedia art exhibition, Picking Up the Threads: Remaking the Fabric of Care which toured nationally to raise awareness of this legislation.

She has exhibited locally, national and international in Canada, Belgium and the UK.

Her practice encompasses biomaterials, papermaking, sculpture, video, drawing, painting and sewing. Recent awards include Creative Bursary Award, Clare Arts Office (2025), Agility Award, the Arts Council (2024), glór arts centre, Ennis, Co. Clare, one-to-one artist mentorship award (2021), Galway Doctoral Scholarship (2018-2023). She was an invited contributor to Pallas Project Entangled Life Programme (2025) and guest speaker/exhibitor at Transforming Birthspace: A Global Colloquium, OCAD University, Toronto, Canada (2025). She is a member of Feminist Communities for Climate Justice National Network, and HAUMEA Ecoversity.

Statement

I am a multidisciplinary artist-researcher developing an emerging eco-social practice rooted in a longstanding interest in birth and the ways life begins, develops and connects. My work explores more-than-human ways of thinking and making, with a particular interest in the reciprocal and entangled relationships between plants, people and place.

I am drawn to working with biomaterials, especially bioplastics and handmade paper created from plant matter. The material qualities of these processes allow me to explore ideas of transformation, growth, care and interdependence. I work across a range of media, including video, sewing, drawing and painting, allowing different materials and forms to shape how I think through my research.

Sharing knowledge and making together are also important parts of my practice. I particularly enjoy facilitating workshops where I can share my methods, materials and research while learning from others. Alongside making and facilitating, writing and publishing are integral to my practice, providing another way to reflect on, develop and communicate my ideas.