The Forbidden Sun is a body of work using photography, video and ambient sound to explore the psychological experience of growing up queer and closeted in rural Ireland. Through landscape imagery, the work evokes an atmosphere of silence and shame, where identity had to be negotiated rather than openly declared.

Natural and synthetic elements collide as geothermal activity meets the relentless presence of industrial machinery. Drawing from personal memory, Ellis constructs a world without clear geographic markers, shaped by unseen pressures and energies. These stark and often haunted landscapes become metaphors for repression, desire and emotional endurance.,

The title comes from Jennifer Johnston’s How Many Miles to Babylon, a novel Ellis first read as a teenager, drawn to its restraint and the emotional charge of what remains unsaid. Ultimately, the work rejects the confines of the closet and embraces the redemptive possibilities of queer desire.