Bordering on the absurd

Second ‘Border Biennale’ set to take place later this month

An exhibition in Townhall Arts Centre lights the fuse on the second instalment of the ‘Border Biennale’. Internationally renowned artist Rita Duffy co-curates the show with Joe Keenan and suggests the concept is going from “strength to strength”.

“I’d like to think that we’re putting the small foundations down for something quite large.”

The 2024 exhibition brought together the work of six artists playfully reflecting on such issues as conflict, abortion rights, flags, the migrant crisis, and queer Irish identity. This time they have Berlin born Irish based Miriam de Burca, Cork artist Pascal Ungerer and Breffni-born-Belfast-based Sally O’Dowd, as well contributions by Rita, whose Belfast roots and Breffni base are the mirror image of Sally’s. The range of artists involved speak of the permeability of the border.

“Nobody ever managed to put a border in the Irish imagination - that phrase came to me, inspired me to push forward because it just seems like such lunacy on such a small island to have the duplications that we have, and all the years of warfare we’ve had and hatred, when in truth were much the same, but then in truth, colonialism does that to people. So here we are, the first colony working it all out.”

The Celt suspects there is much to work out. On the morning of chatting to Rita, a Belfast born artist who works out of her studio in Ballyconnell, we had on Facebook a story about rumours of Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill running for president. A portion of the comments appeared to view the Tyrone woman through the lens of the border: (‘Doesn’t she pay her tax’s to the crown’).

“I’m not trying to broadcast an opinion,” Rita replies. “I think my job as an artist is to question and query and ponder and explore the absurdities, that’s the thing I’m really interested in - the whole idea of the way we live on this planet universally is somewhat absurd, but locally it seems absurd that we have lines in the sky that jump our telephone providers from one company to another. Borders seem to be very last century thinking, and when you look at global warming and the fact that huge tidal waves and massive storms and winds don’t really stop and get their passports stamped.”

When it comes to citizens, she would like a president who require the Irish people to think and demand “we answer to the best part of ourselves as a nation”.

“I’m not sure we’re doing that - the whole idea of rejecting foreigners or preventing migration, that’s a conversation we need to be having locally and globally and asking why are people leaving sub-Saharan Africa? Why do people want to go to Britain? Why do people from the Congo need to migrate to Belgium?”

When it comes to citizens, she would like a president who require the Irish people to think and demand “we answer to the best part of ourselves as a nation”.

“I’m not sure we’re doing that - the whole idea of rejecting foreigners or preventing migration, that’s a conversation we need to be having locally and globally and asking why are people leaving sub-Saharan Africa? Why do people want to go to Britain? Why do people from the Congo need to migrate to Belgium?”

She brings up the colonial exploits of European countries a century and more ago.

“Travelling out beyond our borders, taking things that didn’t belong to us and bringing them home. Then you think to yourself: surprise-surprise, these people are coming to visit us, they are coming back. If you hand out passports to everybody in the colonies you can expect them to arrive on your doorstep some time soon.

“I think there’s lots of things we need to question, it’s not as simple as black and white, I think things that make me afraid are whenever people close down their questioning facilities, their self-examination. What is it that terrifies you about a Syrian refugee coming to live in some kind of shabby dwelling up the street from you? Isn’t there a chance that you might learn something?”

Or fall in love with them, the Celt suggests.

“Exactly, and run away with them to another country! Or stay and create an incredible fusion. There’s always been people coming and going from this island, and coming and staying.

“It’s good for the DNA. I’ll not even start on how far we’ve gone and how many people of Irish extraction are living in places where they didn’t start out. And what did it feel like for us when we saw those signs: ‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish’.

“I don’t want to be part of anything that requires me to support stuff like that. If it means not being Irish or if it means not being any identity, any nationality that’s fine by me. I just don’t want to be a hater.”

The work exhibited in this opening gambit of the 2025 Border Biennale takes imaginative approaches to exploring such issues.

For her contribution, Rita is making a series of drawings.

“It is an animated series called Split and it’s mirroring either side because human beings are doing pretty much the same things on either side of any division, they’re looking after the children, they’re making cups of tea, they’re making dinner, doing work. I love the idea of looking at that simultaneously.”

One of the drawings shows an ambiguous figure cradling an emaciated infant, either dead or dying, while planes loom high overhead.

“There is a primal feel in the image a response perhaps to all the barbaric images of the Gaza genocide delivered by our phones and now stored in our minds,” says Rita.

“Miriam de Búrca has a beautiful set of drawings of artefacts that were found in Ireland that are now housed in the British Museum, and basically she offered to give the drawings to the British Museum if they would give us back the artefacts. So there’s a very interesting exchange of letters between herself and the British Museum.

“In a small way it’s like our Benin Bronzes,” Rita says in reference to thousands of arresting metal sculptures, some dating from 1550, pilfered from the royal palace of Benin, now part of Nigeria by, well you can guess who...

Rita has previously explored British military watch towers in the North in her own work, so it is little surprise she should be drawn to the work of artist, Pascal Ungerer. She notes anyone who has seen the “huge cement works” on the Ballyconnell to Derrylyn Road lit up at night-time has seen “a potential Pascal Ungerer painting” and his “strange landscapes”.

“Beautiful, beautiful paintings of strange eerie landscapes with listening devices – when I looked at them they triggered something in the back of my head that says border watch towers and military defences and security posts, but they have a certain touch of magic about them as well,” she accurately describes.

Finally, for the exhibition part of he project, they have recruited Killeshandra native Sally O’Dowd. Rita notes she “is doing incredible drawings” with charcoal she has made from wood sourced from Florencecourt, just across the border into South Fermanagh.

“She is working with Killeshandra Women’s Group and up at Florencecourt - this is very much an indigenous response to border thinking, I really like the idea of kind of working with my neighbours, with people around me and see how far we can explore these ideas.”

After the exhibition there will be an ongoing series of site specific events

“The aim is to generate interest and put artwork into specific landscapes around the border area between Cavan and Fermanagh,” she promises.

There will also be residencies provided for artists to work in small towns along the border. Engaging with the public in their communities is key for Rita.

“And now more than ever as our chaotic world becomes even more chaotic, the potential of art is significant and I just don’t think it should be limited to within the white walls of a gallery.

“It’s really important that art goes out over the fields, and across ditches, and over fences and into places where you least expect to see it.”

“I like to think of the border as a place possibility now. It was a kind of like a huge wound and I suppose the only way to treat that is to heal it, imagine ourselves beyond it.

While she observes how borders are becoming increasingly “contentious and difficult places” she believes art can act as a healing balm for that historic wound.

“I just think the idea of turning something that was always regarded as problem, difficult territory, angry, dark, sinister, and into something that is incredibly amazing, creative space, I just think that’s where art goes at its best.”