Responding to the urgency of ecological collapse, this project explores the potential of speculative art and archaeology in developing alternative relationships with the environment. Centred on the Scottish Cailleach, the study draws on Haraway’s Chthonic perspectives, Butler’s theory of gender performativity and the practice of becoming-with to challenge binary structures and hierarchical thinking.

The project argues that conventional associations between femininity and nature risk reinforcing systems of domination and exclusion. Through the reinterpretation of folkloric narratives, it suggests that disrupting gender binaries may support more inclusive and conscientious approaches to environmental understanding.

The practical work shown here comprises a photographic series produced through embodied performance and a collection of ceramic sculptures that engage with clay as both material and a conceptual link to the earth. These elements operate as methods of speculative thinking, proposing the existence of a multispecies Cailleach whose form combines human and deer attributes. The motif of the antlered hind and the Cailleach’s transformative abilities act as a method for thinking beyond distinctions between nature and culture, feminine and masculine. Asking the viewer to become-Cailleach.

This project was the the outcome of my thesis at the UHI within the Contemporary Art and Archaeology masters program.