aemi recommends: HLG Presents – Mirror Martyr Mirror Moon by Jesse Jones @ The Lighthouse
Published date: 26 May 2026
The Lighthouse is delighted to present a programme of three artist films curated by aemi Co-Director, Alice Butler as part of Hugh Lane Gallery’s Explore & Learn off site education programming during the gallery’s period of temporary closure.
Curated around Irish artist Jesse Jones’ sensational new film Mirror Martyr Mirror Moon (2026) the screening also features Michelle Williams Gamaker’s House of Women (U.K., 2017, 14 minutes) and Chiara Caterina’s Objet d’enigme (Italy, Belgium, 2026, 18 minutes) which screened alongside Mirror Martyr Mirror Moon at its world premiere at International Film Festival Rotterdam in January of this year. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Jesse Jones.
The screening will be introduced by film curator Alice Butler, who will also mediate the post-screening Q+A .
Mirror Martyr Mirror Moon: (16 mins) by Jesse Jones
Mirror Martyr Mirror Moon by artist Jesse Jones is a cartographic operatic film work based on the life of three women: Artemisia Gentileschi, the 17th century painter, St Catherine the Christian Martyr, and Hypatia of Alexandria. Taking its inspiration from The Gentileschi painting of 1616, “Self Portrait as St Catherine the Martyr” Mirror Martyr Mirror Moon, explores how the mirror has been used as a device of self-representation and a powerful tool of feminist cinema. The film includes a score composed by Irene Buckley, starring Colombian American singer Stephanie Lamprea, and featuring the music of Francesca Caccini and text drawn from the poetry of Christine de Pizan.
Objet d’enigme (18 minutes) by Chiara Caterina
Doors, keys masks, empty rooms—objects spinning endlessly, fragments of an unknown dream or mysterious clues from an unsolvable puzzle. Their repetitive motion suggests a hidden logic, yet the clearer these images become, the deeper the mystery grows, leaving us suspended between reality and illusion, presence and disappearance, revelation and uncertainty.
House of Women (14 mins) by Michelle Williams Gamaker
In House of Women, the artist recasts the role of a silent, dancing girl named Kanchi in the film Black Narcissus (1947). The coveted role was played by a seventeen year old Jean Simmons, who as a white English actor wore dark makeup and a jewel in her nose to become the “exotic temptress” of Rumer Godden’s novel of the same name. In her video, Williams Gamaker auditions only Indian expat or first generation British Asian women and non-binary individuals living in London. Unlike the original role, in House of Women the Kanchi of the 21st Century speaks. Shot on 16mm film, the four candidates, Krishna Istha, Jasdeep Kandola, Tina Mander and Arunima Rajkumar introduce themselves to an anonymous reader under the glare of the studio lights. This was the first film in the artist’s Fictional Activism series, and the first instalment of her Dissolution trilogy (2017-19).
This film programme is part of Hugh Lane Gallery’s Explore & Learn offsite education programming during the gallery’s period of temporary closure.
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