“What does Irish culture and identity look like one hundred years after the formation of the State?”
This question is at the heart of we make our own histories, an exhibition by internationally renowned Irish artist Anthony Haughey, which opened at the National Museum of Ireland - Decorative Arts & History, Collins Barracks, Dublin 7, on the 28th February.
The exhibition, which runs until 30 June 2024, is the culmination and celebration of Haughey’s artist residency at the National Museum from 2021 – 2024. During his residency, Haughey collaborated with more than 500 people across Ireland in a series of dynamic conversations, workshops and durational art processes, to create a series of artworks inspired by the Museum’s collections, which explore how we understand and embrace emerging cultural identities.
Haughey’s is one of five residencies funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport, and Media to mark the latter years of the Decade of Centenaries, in the context of a changing Ireland, 100 years after the formation of the state.
Curated by Maolíosa Boyle and Jonathan Cummins
Through artworks that are in turn provocative, playful, complex and visually beautiful, the exhibition aims to challenge, question and engage visitors. Highlights of the exhibition include:
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A Dress for Akunma (2021) and A Dress for Ramlah (2023)
Akunma is a young African Irish woman and member of the Nwanne Diuto African Women’s group who worked with Anthony Haughey to design and make a stunning garment which fuses Irish Ogham script and Nsibidi, a 2000 BCE ideographic script indigenous to the Ejagham peoples of south-eastern Nigeria.
A Dress for Ramlah was a collaboration between Leina Ibnouf, Rita Petlane, artist Bláthnaid McClean and Anthony Haughey. The hand-drawn fabric design is the outcome of a series of workshops and transnational research, fusing Irish, South African and Sudanese cultures.
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A Flag for Ireland
More than 300 participants were invited by Haughey in a series of artist-led workshops to reimagine a flag for Ireland, one hundred years on from the foundation of the state, which might represent people from all cultures and traditions. In the exhibition, visitors can see all 306 flag designs in a series of specially made books, as well as engage with 40 life-size flags displayed on flagpoles. Visitors to the exhibition will be encouraged to create their own flag designs on response cards in the exhibition reflection space.
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Young People’s Assembly
Haughey worked with young people from five post primary schools from Sligo, Limerick, Belfast, Clare and Dublin to draft their own Manifestos for a Future Ireland. Each school held their own Assembly, in the Ceramics Room of the National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology in March 2023. Haughey’s installation features the table at which the Assemblies took place and five bespoke, mobile sculptural monitors showing looped footage of the Assemblies, an exercise in deliberative democracy discussing urgent issues facing their generation.
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Remember to Forget the Past
In this short film, three African Irish women, Leina Ibnouf, Lauretta Igbosonu and Rita Petlane discuss artefacts they selected from the Museum’s Ethnographic collections, chosen for the special meaning for them, as Irish women who have come from, respectively, Sudan, Nigeria and South Africa. With Haughey and curator Aoife O’Brien, the women explore how the shadow of nineteenth and twentieth century colonialism has shaped their lives.
Lauretta Igbosonu, one of the project collaborators, reflects in the film Remember to Forget the Past:
I think museums are mournful places. It’s like visiting a cemetery or the ruins of an imperial past where histories and memories collide. But like the phoenix rising from the ashes, it is also a place full of exciting possibilities where we can reimagine and reclaim our own histories.”
A number of the co-produced artworks, including A Dress for Akunma, a neon artwork we make our own histories and the footage from the Young People’s Assemblies, will become part of the National Museum of Ireland’s permanent collection, and feature in Changing Ireland – Stories from the Collections, a new permanent exhibition about 20th Century History of Ireland, currently under development to open at the NMI later this year.
The we make our own histories exhibition is on display until 30 June 2024, and the Museum plans a varied programme of events, including talks, workshops and tours for schools and the public over the coming months.
Also planned is a major conference exploring the role of artists in museums, which will take place on 21 May 2024.
Admission is free.