Ciara Byrne (b. 2001, Co. Mayo) is an Irish diaspora artist whose practice is driven by a search for belonging, where family history is interwoven through present lives. She constantly pushes her work in different directions, in search of that which truly satisfies. Byrne’s practice is an investigatory process, she explores images through drawing and print before ultimately realising her outcomes through the medium of textile. Themes such as migration, dislocation, and relocation emerge; from the most personal sense of being connected to a place and to one other, to the wider context of the prevailing disconnection within society today. In the age of fast and cheap air travel and growing multicultural societies, Byrne questions – is the issue of ‘belonging’ to one such place outdated? And why does migration, for some, still feel like exile?