Rudaí Fiáine grows out of the bond between land and people that runs through Irish culture. My ancestors history is shaped by dispossession, by the famine, by migration. Yet what survived was language, songs, stories and rituals that carried meaning when little else did.

When I walk these roadside verges, I notice the wild plants forcing their way through tarmac and stone. They shouldn’t thrive, but they do. These plants show up in our folklore and old sayings too, they’ve always been part of how we read the land, how we remember. For me they stand as reminders of both the difficulty and the endurance, the struggle and the survival.

Donegal, Ireland (2025)