During her performances, viewers will become immersed in compelling, absorbing experiences as they watch seemingly infinite repetitions of apparently futile repetitive tasks and absurd activities which Kirwan regards as metaphors for processes of mourning and as the medium for the metaphorical construction of memory. Kirwan has taken inspiration from the mourning traditions of ancient Greece and the Middle East and also draws on her own experience of mourning the loss of a loved one, the seemingly endless repetitions being a form of keening and searching which act as a metaphors for wayfinding and navigation in the wilderness of bereavement.

Grief-Work is underpinned by Kirwan’s inquiry into the German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schlegel’s radical concept of the fragment as a dynamic practice which aims at fragmentation for its own sake. Intrinsic to Kirwan’s reiterations is an essential incompletion which is itself the mode of fulfilment. Her work draws also on the Hegelian concept of memory as repetition that constantly reinvents itself as a perma- nently recreating and re-enacting loop.

Grief-Work echoes Kirwan’s performances in earlier projects, especially her film installations Fragment and Trace, (2015), Memory Theatre, (2017) perpetuum mobile (2019), and live performances on beaches in the UK and Cyprus.