Launch: Love is blindly reaching out rhizoids and anchoring them to a rock

‘Love is blindly reaching out rhizoids and anchoring them to a rock’ is the newest manifestation of the world of Xenophon, a collaborative world-building project by McGibbon O’Lynn.

Rooted in the fictional world of the Xenothorpians - a fluid species mutating across vegetal, human, and ecological entanglement - the exhibition activates a multispecies romance beyond the species and the sexual. The project expands ideas of intimacy and relations through flings, courtships, longings, and liaisons with the garden.

The artistic duo consider how the gamification of dating has shaped how humans relate to one another, from 1960s TV shows like The Dating Game to 1990s board games like Dream Phone, and today’s swipe-based apps like Tinder and Bumble. These formats reduce love to strategy, speed, and surface, often reinforcing transactional and disposable dynamics. This exhibition responds to that shift, questioning what we lose when intimacy becomes a game. it proposes a radical reimagining of connection - towards a more expansive, inclusive, and multispecies form of love and relationality.

The audience is invited into this multispecies dating game through ritual, material, and speculative storytelling. The project asks: what new intimacies arise when we love without species’ boundaries?

Artists

Maeve O'Lynn is a writer, filmmaker and researcher based in Belfast.

Siobhán McGibbon is a visual artist and researcher based in Cork.

This project is supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Derry City & Strabane District Council and Cork County Council.

For more information visit CCADLD.org/exhibitions.

Image: Courtesy of Siobhan McGibbon