The Land of Saints and Sufferers
Sarah Long
“I realised my life would be full of mundane physical suffering and that there was nothing special about it. Suffering wouldn’t make me special, and pretending not to suffer wouldn’t make me special. Talking about it, or even writing about it, would not transform the suffering into something useful.”[1]
Sally Rooney’s characters are always suffering silently, and this silence grants her characters a kind of saintliness. Religion seeps across Rooney’s books as it does across our culture. Susan Sontag describes this ‘Christian sensibility’ in her essay “The Artist as Exemplary Sufferer” (1962): ‘For two thousand years, among Christians and Jews, it has been spiritually fashionable to be in pain. Thus, it is not love which we overvalue, but suffering–more precisely, the spiritual merits and benefits of suffering.”[2] Rooney’s heroines often denounce the uniqueness of their suffering but never quite escape the sense of morality they derive from managing their experiences in solitariness.
Mary O’Leary’s exhibition ‘Suffering In Silence’ at Studio 12, in the Backwater Artist Group, pulls me into its discomfort. A feeling of unease engulfs the gallery space. O’Leary confidently dominates the architecture–a harsh red wall, windows blocked with an icky red lace, spills squirting out from hard exteriors–she wants me to feel this. The red light is particularly confrontational. It bears down upon the children’s chair placed before a TV screen. The chair is small and wooden with red upholstery. The light casts dramatic shadows of it across the room, emphasising its isolation. This chair should not be alone; it should be in a playroom or a classroom and a part of a much larger social network barely visible among the rows of many others. Seeing it alone and spotlighted reminds me of some kind of punishment. A forced exile – a consequence of ‘bad behaviour.’ Thumb tacks line the red padding, piercing right through the elasticated material. The diligent border points towards some display of obedience or focused attention. I can’t escape the feeling of being disciplined in some way. I look at the chair, and I assume I am not meant to sit here. It is too small, I wouldn’t be comfortable. So, should I stand? I look at the small red chair and wonder if I am to suffer too. Does the artist want me to feel some distress?
I stare at the screen, unsure of myself. A still image is displayed on the screen. It’s in high contrast, black-and-white, making the details hard to decipher. There appears to be a doll in the lap of a masked individual. It’s a stark image, and it’s not going anywhere; it is as if the film that should be displayed is frozen. The moments never pass. There is no escape. This image looms large over the story, over your psyche. On the other hand, there is resilience to be found here; you must sit in your anxiety, and the artist won’t let you move. A domestic carpet lies on the floor between the TV and the chair. An old-fashioned locker props up the outdated model. The design is more than a recreation of the past; there is a sense that this is a past that is still being experienced, and this is a sitting room that haunts the present.
Nothing continues to happen on the screen. The image remains; suffocating. Over my shoulder, however, projected against the back wall, there is a nightmare-ish scene. Overflow (2024) depicts the upper torso of a figure lying on their back. They appear to be in bed, although the intense lighting makes it unclear as to whether this is a domestic or institutional setting. A dark figure, completely in shadow, hovers above their body. The bed-bound figure squirms and struggles. It is almost a relief when the silhouette oozes black liquid on them. A sharp shock perforates the feeling of dread. The absence of noise, the deadening presence of the moving image, adds to this absorption. The screams that don’t come from the figure occur internally inside me instead. I turn my attention back to the TV screen, and the image has changed; a child appears in the shadows like a doll from a horror film. Her cheeks are dark contours of mawkish ruddiness. Mary Boo (2024) is composed of photographs, all manipulated into excessive blacks and whites, and many featuring this same child. Upon the carpet in front of the television lies a sippy cup. The same liquid that the shadow figure expelled on the sleeping figure seeps out of the cup and darkens the fibre, creating a strong connection between the two films. The child of Mary Boo and the frozen adult of Overflow blend into one another as O’Leary visual representations of inner suffering bleed from one film to the next.
Against the garish red wall, there are three sculptures encased in glass boxes. The base panel is black and supports, alternatively, a seashell, a plastic children’s toy, and a plush teddy squashed down to fit inside the glass parameters. The seashell doubles as an ashtray, as cigarette stubs are cradled in its centre. It reads as a gesture of cruelty or carelessness to diminish and taint the beauty of this perfectly formed armour. The hard protective layer has been penetrated, and the black soot of the ash stains the interior. The plastic toy resembles a dinosaur head that appears aggressive and monster-like. I get the sense that this is not a sad childhood but an unsettling one, where black emotions liquify and have nowhere to go, and so they don’t go; they stay, and they pool into more blackness.
O’Leary’s exhibition demonstrates that there is nothing beautiful or noble about suffering in silence. Nobody has to be a saint; nobody should try–it’s a trap. The silence of O’Leary’s Overflow is ruptured as she presents her portrayal of pain publicly. It is a brave act, and it is a useful act. It is comforting to see human emotions manifested into materials. It is powerful to express yourself in a different language. Here, the artist is not the exemplary sufferer but the commendable voice rejecting the religious notion that suffering is a discovery of the self and, therefore, a private matter.
[1] Sally Rooney, Conversations With Friends (London: Faber and Faber, 2017)
[2] Susan Sontag, “The artist as exemplary sufferer”, Against Interpretation and Other Essays (Penguin Group, 2009, originally published 1962)