Áine Phillips has been making performance art since the late 80s in Ireland and internationally exploring feminist themes and issues of social justice. Her work often uses her own lived experience as content and subject matter, with the aim of generating universal metaphors of transformation, historical revision, and contemporary emotional affect. Photographic and video documentation of live performance art is often limited in its capacity to express the intensity, power, or uncanniness of the action. After two decades of collecting performance documentation, Phillips began drawing and mark-making on the original photographic images to try to elaborate the intentions behind each performance, express a stronger emotional charge, and heighten drama with dream-like, haunted resonances.

The resulting After Images expand the emotional and conceptual meaning of the performances to evoke themes such as abuse of power, gender violence, reproductive rights, and institutional and social injustice.