Joe Caslin

Joe Caslin is an Irish street artist, art teacher and activist from County Roscommon. He draws his figures in pencil, has them enlarged onto biodegradable paper and pastes them across the gable walls of buildings using a potato starch glue, producing monumental black-and-white pieces that are meant to fade: rain dissolves most of them within weeks. His "Our Nation's Sons" series confronts the isolation of young men, while "The Claddagh Embrace", installed in April 2015 at the corner of Dame Street and South Great George's Street in Dublin, became the defining image of Ireland's marriage equality referendum. He builds each project with the communities it concerns, addressing suicide, addiction, immigration, consent, disability and gender-based violence.