Looking at the Woman in a Bomb Blast (2025)

Looking at the Woman in a Bomb Blast by Dr. Daniel Jewesbury is an experimental ekphrasis: a unique piece of art writing, exploring power, desire, and looking, and the way they come together and find expression in art. It’s also a confrontation with artistic and erotic obsession. 

A slender young woman falls backwards, blown off her feet by a bomb. Frozen in time, her bare legs stick up, her hands grasping the air. Her face is covered by a page from a newspaper. People approach to look at her, bending down to study the folds of her dress, the immature curve of her thigh, her neat toes, splayed in surprise. The woman is a sculpture, made by the Irish artist F. E. McWilliam in 1974. In this bronze figure’s awkwardly graceful near-death contortions, entire histories of pain, death, sex and visual pleasure have been condensed.  

Looking at the Woman in a Bomb Blast uses different voices to unravel these histories: a writer labours over an elaborate ‘explanation’ of what she means, while the voice of the Woman herself offers acerbic insights and asides. The argument that is staged between the two of them takes place in a series of short chapters, in which they assert their contrasting ideas, insisting on their own approaches to discovering her ‘true meaning’: by turns analytical, affective, confessional, and detached. 

This artistic research publication is an associated initiative of CAPIm and is the first volume in the new series ArtMonitor Books: Voices which has the mission to publish experimental work that bridges artistic research with other research traditions from within and beyond the university. A series of combined readings and conversations marking the release of the new volume will take place throughout 2025, including events at:

The Seamus Heaney Centre, Queens Univeristy, Belfast
19 February 6-7,30 pm
Daniel jewesbury with Abigail McGibbon and
Part art of the Ekphrasis Project, an annual research and publication project run by the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s in partnership with the Ulster Museum.

Litteraturhuset, Gothenburg, Sweden
3 April 5pm
Daniel Jewesbury with artist and curator Jason E. Bowman and designer of the book Alexandra Papademetriou. Moderated by Ann Ighe, editor of Ord&Bild.

Galway Arts Centre Nun’s Island Theatre, Galway, Ireland
8 April 6pm 
Daniel Jewesbury with writer and critic Michaele Cutaya
During the Cúirt International Festival of Literature.

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, Ireland
10 April 6pm 
Daniel Jewesbury with researchers Lisa Godson and Tina Kinsella.
Moderated by Mick Wilson, co-director CAPIm.

Pony Books, Gothenburg, Sweden
31 May 3pm
Speakers to be confirmed.

The Autumn 2025 programme of events in Stockholm and Paris will be published shortly.