On this week's Out & Proud, host Trevor Keegan speaks to two queer creatives - Joe Caslin and Lórcan Strain - about the importance of art, both personally and politically.
Caslin is a street artist, speaker and teacher, and you've probably already seen his most recognisable work: the Claddagh Embrace, a striking black and white drawing of two men embracing. The moving portrait could be spotted on a corner of Dame Street in the lead up to the Marriage Equality Referendum in 2015.
The iconic image captured the hope, empathy and significance of that referendum, but for Caslin, identity - and the fight to express that identity - has been long intertwined with his art.
"Being an artist is part of your make up, it's part of every hour of the day so it kind of would connect with your identity in that manner", Caslin told Keegan.
"I use art, maybe, as a way of making sense of the world", he said, recalling the first time he started creating large scale work for a project called Our Nation's Sons, which focused on mental health, youth unemployment and particularly young men and suicide.*
Devastatingly, Caslin revealed that in the first five years of him working as an art teacher he lost five of his students to suicide.
"It was a way that I was processing the world that was around me and I kind of do that when I'm drawing, so it's an act of therapy in a way but also then when it's put out there it kind of identifies myself in it, in a way."
Caslin explains that art is a guiding force for his life: "It's how I manage myself and it's how I manage interpreting the world and how chaotic it can be. So for me, it's a way of escaping and making sometimes quite beautiful stuff out of really difficult topics and situations."
For Strain, this is the case too. The artist said that their identity is "completely caught up in" their art. "I wouldn't be me without it."
Strain trained as an actor initially, which taught them about identity: "I didn't realise that in order to play other people you have to be a fully formed human yourself. You have to love yourself, be proud of yourself."
They took the lessons and turned them toward their own art: "There was nothing out there that represented me as a nonbinary, country 'queerdo' from Donegal, you know?
"I make work that doesn't agree with a lot of people but as long as I'm proud of it, and as long as I think I've made something really beautiful, really edgy and really special and that there's enough nudity in it to freak the audiences out!"
* If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can contact: The Samaritans (phone 116123), or Pieta House (1800 247 247). Visit RTÉ Helplines here.
