Catherine O’Connor (b.1998) is an Irish textile artist who established her studio practice in 2019. Specialising in portraiture, she has exhibited with the European Parliament Liaison Office in the UK’s He Made Hope and History Rhyme Exhibition at Ulster University as well as being commissioned to weave a tapestry for the YES Festival, Ireland’s first all female arts festival.

Currently studying for a MFA at West Dean College her current exploration of figurative work engages with themes of embodiment, repetition and the tension between silence and visibility, positioning textiles as a vital and contemporary artistic medium.

Catherine O’Connor is a tapestry and textile artist whose work explores the intersection of female embodiment and trauma. Her work examines the relationship between the body, memory and the slow, repetitive labour of making from a feminist perspective. Through meticulously handwoven and hand-stitched forms, she engages with textiles as a material that holds both personal and political weight.

Her work begins with a drawing, which is then translated into woven and embroidered compositions. She dyes her own specific colour palette of wool and works on a floor loom using traditional techniques. The time-intensive nature of weaving and stitching is central to the work, reflecting the persistence of trauma and the embodied repetition of working with textiles. Each piece becomes a site where material, time and subject matter are interwoven and become inseparable.

Through this labour, O’Connor confronts the tension between visibility and silence surrounding trauma. Her work does not seek resolution but instead holds space for discomfort, vulnerability and reflection. By working with textiles – materials historically associated with domesticity and femininity – she reclaims their potential as tools for resistance, insisting on the value of the lived experience and the political significance of making.