Siobhán works with natural materials, withdrawing them from their cycles of generation, growth and decay. This process gives form to a range of projects which consider our place on Earth in the context of geological time. Her artworks make use of natural phenomena and technologies to stage poetic and philosophical engagements between people and their natural world. Beginning with a specific site of investigation, Siobhán weaves diverse narratives into visual stories, often inviting nature itself to participate in the creative process.
Siobhán McDonald is the recipient of prestigious international awards, including the European Commission’s S+T+ARTS 4Water Award (2024) and the inaugural Ocean Memory Award (2022). In 2023, she received further awards through the EU Commission Alumni Award (Italy), the Alfred Kordelin Foundation Climate Whirl Award (Helsinki.)
RESONANCE
The central theme of RESONANCE explores Ports as a gateways of exchange, reimagined as a porous, interspecies space. Rooted in the ecology of wetlands and looking toward its ecological future, the project engages with the port’s site as a living, breathing organism, one that holds the accumulated layers of past, present, and speculative futures.
Through this lens, RESONANCE invites us to reconsider the port not just as infrastructure, but as a dynamic ecosystem shaped by natural forces, cultural memory, and interwoven human and more-than-human histories. Spanning a conceptual timeline from 1850 to 2050, the project weaves together environmental data, historical narratives, Gaussian Splatting technologies and imaginative speculation to uncover hidden traditions, submerged histories, and overlooked ecologies.
