ARTIST STATEMENT

Norah Dineen is an Irish interdisciplinary artist working across performance, painting, film, music and installation. At the heart of her practice is a single question: what does it mean to truly relate — to another person, to the living world, to oneself — in a culture that profits from disconnection?

Her work begins in the body. As an Irish woman, she has long been interested in the ways female experience is silenced, made invisible, or rendered spectacular on someone else's terms. Through performance, painting and film, she creates spaces where that experience is allowed to exist on its own terms — raw, unhurried and honest. She is drawn to vulnerability not as weakness but as the only honest starting point for any real encounter.

This inquiry has grown outward over time — from the female body to the body of the natural world. Both are subject to the same systems: exploited, objectified, romanticised and then discarded. Colonial and patriarchal structures have long treated land and women as resources to be managed rather than as living, relational beings deserving of dignity and care. Dineen's work sits in that recognition and refuses it.

She is not interested in art that performs power. She is interested in art that undoes it — quietly, collectively, from the ground up. In a culture saturated with celebrity, vanity and the relentless performance of status, her work insists on slowing down, on looking at what is actually beautiful, and on sharing it without ownership.

Her recent wearable art series, Walking Billboards for the Natural World, extends this into everyday life. Created in collaboration with The Grá, a Dublin-based ecological print maker, these pieces invite the wearer to become a carrier of something worth celebrating — birds, hands, wild things. Not a brand. Not an image. A reminder that we belong to the living world, and that without that belonging, neither art nor survival is possible.

Dineen's practice is relational, ethical and rooted in care. It is feminist and ecological in equal measure — because these are not separate concerns. How we treat the earth and how we treat each other arise from the same place. And it is from that same place that all meaningful art begins.

BIOGRAPHY

Norah Dineen is an Irish interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, musician and performer whose work spans painting, photography, film, music, performance and installation . Funded by the Irish Arts Council, her practice is rooted in an ethics of care — exploring the intersections of gender, ecology, colonial history and human connection through a body of work that is as politically engaged as it is visually and sonically alive.

Dineen has exhibited and performed internationally, with solo and group exhibitions in Ireland, Germany, Greece, Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States. She was artist in residence at A-Dash and PS: Space in Athens, Greece, and was a Guest Artist Lecturer at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia in 2023. Her work has been featured in the Hollywood edition of Vanity Fair and in House & Garden Magazine.

As a filmmaker, Dineen writes, produces, directs and performs in her own films, working outside the Hollywood model of production in a deliberately independent, self-directed practice. Her films — spanning documentary, narrative and art film — are screened in gallery contexts, refusing the commercial frameworks that have long objectified and reduced women on screen. Her performance in Sleep (2016) won Best Actress at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film Awards. She wrote, produced and directed Northern Star (2018), which was a semi-finalist at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival and screened at the Cork Film Festival. Her film Sleepless was screened at Cinesalon in 2024, and Fantasy was screened at the National Sculpture Factory in 2023.

As a musician, Dineen released Unlikely Sinners Make for Unlikely Saints (2024), produced with Teemu Takatalo at Mutual Sound Studio in Athens, followed by Normal (April 2026) — her debut album, recorded in Athens in 2021–22 with Nikos Kordelis, Jaakko Eino Kalevi and producer George Gaudy, and released last, against industry convention, as a deliberate act of marking origins and honoring the imperfection of process. She is currently completing Concordia, the first part of a trilogy written between New York and Ireland, to be produced in Greece.

Her recent wearable art series, Walking Billboards for the Natural World, in collaboration with Dublin-based ecological print maker The Grá, extends her practice into everyday life — inviting collective celebration of the natural world over the performance of status or image.

Dineen holds degrees in visual and performing arts, performance and sociology. Her formal training includes Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London; L'Institut des Études Politiques, Paris; Actor Space Berlin; and Trinity College Dublin.

Current Residence: Ireland

Norah is an award-winning actor (IMDB), Filmmaker (Producer, Writer, Director), Painter, Photographer, and Musician.

FILMOGRAPHY; Click here

MUSIC: click HERE

SOLO EXHIBITION;

Culture Night sOLO PERFORMANCE, SEEN/UNSEEN (Before Your Eyes), a continuous 6-9pm performance within an installation at the National Sculpture Factory. Sept 2025.

FEMALE EXPERIENCE (Weight) and Fantasy on Display (Image), Installation and performance, The National Sculpture Factory, July 2024.

GREENPOINT OPEN STUDIOS, My Echo series paintings were exhibited during Greenpoint Open Studios at Homcore, NYC, June 2024.

PROTESTING BOTOX, Performance, The National Sculpture Factory, Ireland November 2023.

M E R K A B A H, Weekly Solo exhibition at the National Sculpture Factory, Ireland, August- December 2023. Weekly Performances of songs from upcoming album A SIMPLE WOMAN. Installation and Screening of films weekly: Shop till you drop, No Mans Land, FLOW, LA River, Fantasy, Sleepless.

RETURNING WITH PRAYER FLAGS. EXHIBITION and performance by GROUNDless. PS: Space, ATHENS, September 2021.

Prayer flags show in NEW YORK July 2021, 424 west 54th street New York, NY. fOR MORE INFORMATION: @prayer.flags and here

IMPROV PERFORMANCE BY GROUNDless, BACKSPACE, Athens. October 2020.

THE LIGHTS ARE ON BUT NOBODY IS HOME. EXHIBITION and performance by GROUNDless. PS: Gallery, ATHENS, SEPTEMBER 2020.

SKIN, Bones + flesh; Performance and Exhibition, ADASH Space, Athens. 2019

SKIN, Bones + flesh ; Performance and Exhibition, BACKSPACE, Athens. 2019

GROUNDLESS; Performance + Film (Wild, Black and White Short, Ire 2019), ADASH Space. 2019.

SKIN, FLESH + BONES; Performance and Exhibition, MEME, Athens. 2019

Hollywood Expressionism. Solo Exhibition. Atelier Aviatrix. Berlin. 2014. 

Exploring the Fe/Male. Solo Exhibition; Painting Installation Project Space in former DDR offices. Scharnhorststraße 32. Berlin. 2012. 

Pop Up Show. Solo Exhibition. Schoeneberg, Berlin. 2012.

Das Gift. Solo Exhibition. Neukölln. Berlin. 2012.

"cutting Crops". Private Commission. Interior Graffitti/Wall. Mural. Kreuzberg, Berlin. 2011.

GROUP EXHIBITION;

Cave Triptych, Exhibition at Picture Theory, Chelsea, NYC, 2024.

Screening of film Sleepless at Cinesalon, curated by Max LeCain, July 2024.

The Publication and group show “love Letters” will exhibit Norah Dineen’s work, curated by the founder of the Athens Biennale, Xenia Kalpaktsoglou.

SOLO plus 2, Performance. Criss Cross X2, Athens, ADASH Space Athens Greece. 2019.

SOLO, Performance. Criss Cross X2, Athens, ADASH Space Athens Greece. 2019.

O Fim. Group Exhibition. Rio De Janeiro. Brazil. 2013. 

Das Gift. Group Exhibition. 2011.

See-Saw. Foundation End of year exhibition. Central Saint Martins College of art and design. Backhill. london. 2009. 

girl in chair, Painting Group exhibition. National College of Art and Design Dublin. 2007.

PUBLICATIONS:

Love Letters Project, Publication, Athens Greece, 2026

Norah Dineen’s Work Is Currently Featured As An A-List Artist In The Hollywood Edition Of Vanity Fair

The Egg Series By Norah Dineen Was Featured In House & Garden Magazine, December, January & February Edition 2023.

Interviewed by FILM DAILY, https://filmdaily.co/craft/spotlight/norah-dineen-northern-star/#

Zoo Magazine, Norah Dineen interviewed artist Daniel Richter.

Art Slant Magazine, Norah Dineen interviewed artist Billy Childish for Berlin Art Week.  

ACADEMIC POSITIONS:

Guest Artist Lecturer at The University of the arts, philadelphia, 2023