Installation for Culture Night 2025
Shandon Studios / Cork, Ireland
It was the Confessions light box that started this mess.
I mean, this work in progress.
After the Unitarian Church fire in 2023, this curious item was given to Shandon Studios, where it sat in a corner of the shared kitchen area gathering dust. (A small amount of Internet research revealed that the article had been purchased at an auction in Cork, Ireland in 2021. Before that, who knows? Maybe it really was from a Catholic Church. See example here.)
I asked permission of my colleagues in the Studio to keep the box in my studio area, where it sat on my desk as a kind of joke. (I am a trained Chaplain.) And so it sat, and sat.
On another day, I was gifted with more than a dozen leftover canvases of differing sizes and qualities. My original plan had been to use these as bases for recycled Christmas ornament collages, so one September day I painted them all red and hung them on the wall to dry in a higgledy-piggledy fashion. I was attracted by the look of 14 red canvases, where sometimes what was underneath the red coat showed out a little bit, mysteriously.
I thought the patterns were like sin covered with blood.
Let me explain that startling image…it’s not original. In Christian belief, it is the blood sacrifice of Jesus on the cross that covers the believer’s sins and delivers him from its deadly consequences.
My eye immediately went to my desk to the Confessions box. What if I suspended the box amidst the red canvases as a symbol of the confession of the Christian resulting in having their sins covered?
So my (also a Chaplain) husband Neal Dunnigan mounted brackets to hold the Confession box in the middle of the 14 canvases.
Then I thought, “Confess what sins?” Well, going back to Cain and Abel in the shared Abrahamic texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (in chronological order), the sin of war amongst brothers came to mind as one of the first, worst, and ongoing sins.
So I thought of a drawing I used for a virtual show in Lebanon called “Crone”.
This is what I wrote about her in 2025…
“When will we listen to the far-sighted crone? The wise woman can tell us of the hell of war, the agony of loss. She can warn us if we would only listen. Look into her eyes and see the truth: there’s nothing worth killing a child for.”
I thought, what if I have inexpensive copies made and tear them up and make collages of them. I tried both color and black and white, and preferred the black and white. (Thank you Dacent Print and Design.)
Kneel to Pray
I wanted to add words. I happened to visit an art show opening at St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral in Cork City the same week and took photos of the needlepoint cushions in all the pews…
I decided to have the kneeler photograph copied, again in black and white, to go along with torn pictures of Crone.
I put these two elements together, then added various sized dots of red and green acrylic paint (intentionally bringing in the colors of the flag of Palestine.)
I felt I was getting somewhere but something was missing.
By happenstance I went to a birthday dinner in Lismore, County Waterford, the same weekend. On a visit around the town, I was enthralled by the art in St. Carthage’s Cathedral and took lots of pictures, of course. I was particularly moved by a ceiling bas relief sculpture of a man’s face.
Enlarged, isolated, and printed in black and white, I now had a third element for my collages on red.
The curious, organic, almost octopus tentacle framing of the face gave some rotational movement to each collage that I really liked. The stone cold face was also appealing, but I didn’t know why quite yet.
I knew that an important element of texture – real texture – was missing. As a collage artist, to me, texture is THE element.
But after a discussion of this with mentor Mary P. O’Connor, it was time to leave the studio for the day. And these crutches (that my friend Mary P. gave me to contribute to a woman I knew who was shipping them to Gaza) were sitting there and I thought, “I need to move these out of the way somewhere.”
Boom! I realized, the crutches were PART of it! So the crutches went into what now had become an art installation. Here’s how it looked that day. Notice my soft drink can on top of the box – a whimsical, ironic touch. Home to bed.
Dull. Just not ready. A work in progress.
Another sleep and a new idea came: texture and message brought to the work by crushed Coca-Cola cans! I put the word out to my friends…COKE CANS NEEDED
….then as an afterthought…Please rinse
Why Coca-Cola?
This company has become a focal point of the bad attention received by companies who aid and abet the war on Gaza. It is easy to find this information in reliable news sources such as the Irish Times, Aljazeera, and The Ethical Consumer.
The Coca-Cola company is not the only “sinner” in the big picture of the military-industrial complex and corporate sponsorship of war.
But it’s big, bright, and red. And it matches my canvases. And I serendipitously perched a Coke can on the Confessions box that day before returning home from my studio. Synchronicity at work.
I was also born in Atlanta, Georgia, the home of Coca-Cola, and as a school child in the 50s and 60s was inundated with Coca-Cola propaganda in the form of free tablets, pencils, and keychains given to us by our teachers, “Coke Parties” as class rewards, and yearly field trips (!) to the bottling company.
My sister Angela and I used to sell Coca-Cola in 6 bottle cartons from door to door out of our red wagon when we were little girls. This was a product and service we provided to our (mostly elderly) neighbors. So my relationship with Coke is deep.
As an adult I was a Coca-Cola stockholder for decades. I was proud of the business that built Atlanta – its art museum, ballet, Emory University, Callanwolde – any number of beneficial institutions that made Atlanta great.
Believe me, it goes against the grain to create an art installation that points up the company’s sins rather than its good points. But that’s reality.
It was my friend Mary P. who suggested adding the word “Coca-Cola” to the light box. But I thought it was unfair – it could say Unilever, Microsoft, Proctor and Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, Nestlé, Pizza Hut – the list goes on and on.
So I summed it up (in a graffiti font) in the word “Corporate” which coincidentally separated itself into two distinct parts, just like Coca and Cola.
The corporate world is sin-ridden, and as evil as a malevolent stone-faced octopus.
Sorry, Coke. Your cans are red and shiny and work very well as an artistic component of a piece about sin.
But it’s really about all ya’ll. And me too. All of us, living in and thriving in a world where the murder of innocents is tolerated. Where genocide is just another news item.
But there’s hope. That’s what I want to say with Confessions.
Confession is the first step on the road to repentance. And repentance means change.
The candlelight is the light of hope. Start with a candlelit confession, and miracles can happen.
We are all, like “Confessions”, a work in progress.
Virginia Giglio, September 2025
Video of Confessions, Work in Progress
Weekly Demonstration in Cork – 12/9/2025
Addendum:
Of course I added a bit more. The Octopus-tentacled corporate stone face reappears – I had leftovers. And a box of pop tops spread across the floor!
