Aluminum is everywhere. It’s in your phone, wrapping your food, and carrying you on trains and planes. Few think anything of this ubiquitous product. Yet, altering red bauxite rocks into aluminum power produces substantial pollution in the shape of caustic air omissions and millions of tonnes of waste consisting of hundreds of hazardous chemicals, spread over landscapes globally.

Artist Michele Horrigan lives and works beside Aughinish Alumina, the largest bauxite refinery in Europe, in Askeaton, County Limerick, in Ireland. The toxic mud in her region is just meters from Ireland’s primary river estuary and atop porous limestone. Moreover, the refinery is now owned by Rusal, a Russian company with proven connections to Vladimir Putin’s war machine and not sanctioned by the Irish state.

How can art tackle these major political, industrial, and environmental issues? In her talk, and workshop and exhibition at Tilburg University, Horrigan will share her ongoing arts-based research project, Stigma Damages, which uses archival materials, found objects, and audiovisual installations to combat environmental injustices in Askeaton, and ask more of the roles environmental activism and knowledge-sharing can take in envisioning transitional futures.

An exhibition of Stigma Damages, featuring videos made in Ireland and Australia alongside a series of photographic artworks, is on display in the University’s Cobbenhagen Building, from 19 March to 20 June 2025.

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