Within my painting practice, I am currently exploring women's empowerment through the destructive symbolism of flowers associated with women's sexuality and womanhood. Eve Ensler's play "The Vagina Monologues" (1996) sparked my interest. She explains how society "cleans up" our bodies, linking them to the smell of roses and comparing the imagery of our vulvas to flowers.

Through my work, I try to embody the differences between the expectations of my two feminine sides- the traditional Romanian and the contemporary Dublin. Working with natural cyanotype prints and using geometric Eastern-European-inspired designs, I try to balance these within my work as a commentary on the balance of my two feminine sides.

Julia Filip is a first-generation Irish-Romanian artist and educator. Julia believes that her teaching and art practice have an osmotic relationship, continuously feeding into each other within the classroom and studio space. Her practice is informed by nature and her experiences as a woman through her two cultural identities