Fiona Cahill is an emerging artist known for her innovative community projects that provoke engagement and action. Often interrupting daily life to create shared purpose and connection. Fiona studied drawing at Doncaster Art College, specialised in weaving at Huddersfield University, and taught art, textiles and food tech in schools across Yorkshire. Regularly working with a variety of educational settings, non-profits and charities. She received a Footprint award (national food industry) and a Doncaster CVS award (local voluntary sector) for community work and innovation.

In 2025 Fiona was commissioned by Artbomb to make ‘Rendition’, a month-long installation, featuring her body of work on the subject, two new sculptures, her own film, curated objects, live activism and academic talks. The installation will continue to be shown in the UK and Ireland. Fiona was invited by the National Museum of Ireland to contribute to a new public gallery opening in October 2025, entitled Changing Ireland her contribution includes art and the photograph of her mother and her grandmother taken on the back step of Castlepollard mother and baby institution. 

Drawing on her grandmother’s, her mother’s and her own experience, she says, “The British State refuses to apologise for the deportations and for its historic treatment of unmarried mothers in general.”

“Paper documents became both treasured and traumatic items in our lives. Through enmeshment in paper making, I aim to interrupt the harms of separation and extraction they suffered, harms that are also seen in the colonised experience and in the commodification of the natural world” “Sometimes I plant seeds in my papers. Sometimes I draw on them. Subconscious, surrealist automatic drawings. They look like maps and mycelium.” “I’m world-making. Drawing connections beyond the patrilineage of a family tree. And I’m including the kinship of the natural world, too.”

“A ritualised meditative process allows me to transmute my grief and trauma. Community grieving rituals such as funerals remain unavailable for the vast majority of infants -sons, daughters, siblings -still hidden behind the walls of institutions in the UK and in Ireland. I hope that by recognising ongoing harms we can facilitate the UK apology my mum asked for and the sharing of our communal grief.”

How grief and trauma fuel uncompromising survival, and a more just world is less often seen. ‘Rendition’ provides space and opportunities to record personal histories, thoughts and feelings, and to take action.