Beautiful Fair Town: Fiona O'Neill, textile artist

In October 2021, we organized the second edition of the art exhibition: Beautiful Fair Town - Orașul Târgu Frumos. The event reunited 5 artists from Basque Country, Ireland, Latvia and Turkey, under Arts Lab 3.0, a project funded by European Solidarity Corps of European Union. The art works represent the beauty of Târgu Frumos, in the eyes of the 5 artists involved in a local 8-month volunteering program.

How does an international group of artists perceive Târgu Frumos? What and where is the beauty of this small town? Here is the artwork of Fiona O'Neill from Dublin, Ireland.

Fiona is a textiles artist and activist from Dublin, Ireland. After finishing her studies at NCAD in Fine Art Textiles, she spent three years in Greece working with displaced communities in refugee camps. A large part of her work is informed by the interconnected history of textile techniques and the fight for women’s rights; before women had a voice in the political sphere they used ‘domestic art’ as a covert form of protest. Hundreds of years later, Ní Neil carries on that tradition.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." What appeals to one might not appeal to the other. How does our location impact our perspective and what can we learn from the perspective of Târgu Frumos? 

Dress tells us so much about a country’s history - what values they held, what techniques they mastered, how they structured society.