Someone Who Isn’t Me

April 5th to May 19th 2024

Sulk Chicago

Who is Maeve Coughlin? The name Maeve originates in the Gaelic word Medb, pronounced
“mead” literally meaning “mead-woman, she who rules, intoxicating.” The surname Coughlin is
the Anglicized form of Gaelic “Mac Cochláin” or “Ó Cochláin” meaning descendant of the one
with the cloak. Maeve Coughlin is the mead-woman descended from the cloaked one.
All names are words first. Searching for herself on the Internet as one searches for a word in the
dictionary, Maeve Coughlin was confronted by Maeve Coughlins. She kept tabs on the other
Maeves. She indulged in the voyeurism that is the Internet’s flagship offering. She used images
from the social media accounts of the other Maeves to produce a body of sculptures.
Just as a word fails to encompass the object to which it refers, a name fails to encompass the
person to whom it was given. But all things which are called by a shared word have something in
common beyond the word that refers to them. One sculpture is likely to be dramatically different
from another object called a sculpture. Yet they have something else in common and that shared
aspect is referred to as sculpture. At one time Coughlin saw in the Maeves what she could have
been. In them her other lives were lived. Perhaps every Maeve Coughlin has something in

common besides the fact of their shared name—besides the fact that they all began as the mead-
woman daughter of the hooded one.

The Maeves served Coughlin as a generative tool to explore formal possibilities of sculpture and
images. Images—which are as fundamentally immaterial and referential as names and words—
are reworked into objects in their own right, through a variety of printing methods and built
frames. The images are given second lives, physical lives, no longer referring to the thing
depicted in the original image so much as their immediate presence as a physical object. Under
the new circumstances, within a new context, the image is individuated—as with the Maeves.
Maeve Coughlin is an Australian competitive judo fighter. Maeve Coughlan is a teacher, yogi,
and mommy in Los Angeles, California. Maeve Coughlan is a toddler in Beverly Hills with an
Instagram account. Maeve Coughlan is a neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of
Philadelphia. Maeve Coughlin is a sculptor based in Chicago, Illinois.
Text by Grant Tyler.