Eimear Walshe representing Ireland at the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia

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.”

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