Eimear Walshe per l' Irlanda

 Image: Production still: Eimear Walshe, Ireland at Venice. Photo © Faolán Carey

Sarà l'artista Eimear Walshe a rappresentare il Padiglione dell'Irlanda per la prossima Biennale, presso gli spazi dell'Arsenale di Venezia 

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Following an open call by Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council Ireland, Eimear Walshe has been selected to represent Ireland at Biennale Arte 2024 with Sara Greavu and Project Arts Centre as the curator.

Walshe’s extraordinary work speaks of and from a precarious generation, and proposes new ways to claim a sense of kinship, place and love. They offer a new cultural synthesis that links our contemporary moment to the past — particularly gendered and sexual legacies related to land and housing activism in Ireland, including the compromises made at the end of the 1880s, and the statecraft of the early 20th century.

On being selected, Walshe remarked: “I’m very proud to be representing Ireland at Venice this coming April. My practice is deeply enriched by being embedded in Ireland, in a place and with people so beloved to me. My work is never me alone. So many people have contributed their skills, advice, and raw muscle to the project. This collaborative work aims to demonstrate the intertwinement of histories and solidarities, complicities and betrayals between people as they navigate colonisation and displacement.”

Walshe’s exhibition for Venice draws on the global tradition of earth building, representations of collective labour and home-making, and Ireland’s mechanisms of tenant eviction and the privileging of private property, both before and after the revolutionary period. 

The work includes a multi-channel video installation featuring a group of performers led by the choreographer Mufutau Yusuf, an opera entitled ‘Romantic Ireland’ composed by Amanda Feery for which the artist has written the libretto, and an immersive sculpture scaled to invoke a domestic space. Made in the shadow of the ongoing housing crisis in Ireland, it becomes, variously, a building site of possibility, a wrestling ring for Ireland’s generational and class antagonisms, a space of tender care, and a structure made into a cold ruin by the social death of eviction. 

Curator Sara Greavu comments: “The International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia offers an incredible opportunity to connect the ideas, practices and urgencies of contemporary art in Ireland to those of artists, thinkers and publics internationally. We are so thrilled to work with Eimear for Ireland’s representation in Venice. The pavilion of Ireland at Venice will resonate within the larger framework of Adriano Pedrosa 60th Biennale Arte 2024, as it draws our attention to our own social and material lives, transforming our understanding of ourselves.”

“Eimear is one of the most exciting and innovative artists of their generation. It’s not an exaggeration to say that they’ve almost single-handedly redefined the urgencies of being an artist living and working in Ireland right now.” 
— Matt Packer, Director / CEO, EVA International

After Venice, Walshe’s exhibition will tour nationally, returning to locations and communities across Ireland that have helped to incite and foster the making of the work.

Eimear Walshe representing Ireland at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Curated by Sara Greavu and Project Arts Centre
Commissioning body: Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council Ireland
Press view days: 17 April 2024 – 19 April 2024
Exhibition dates: 20 April 2024 – 24 November 2024
Location: Irish Pavilion, Artiglierie Arsenale