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Exhibition Profile
Visual Artists' News Sheet | September – October 2021
Deirdre O’Mahony, Erratics, 1995-96, acrylic copolymer, pigment, limestone dust on unstretched canvas, 39th EVA International Guest Programme; All photographs by Jed Niezgoda, courtesy of the artists and EVA International.
FOR THE SECOND phase of the 39th EVA International, land and its
EVA 2021: II GWEN BURLINGTON REVIEWS PHASE TWO OF EVA INTERNATIONAL.
contestation is the ongoing issue in question, admirably maintaining its need for a physical manifestation. Like many other international biennials, EVA typifies the links between local/global relationships in its programming. In this phase, which ran from 2 July to 22 August, EVA constructed an image of an extremely outward-looking nation, with Merve Elveren’s curated guest programme, ‘Little Did They Know’, heavily focused on the reconsideration and reinterpretation of historical knowledge and personal narrative, through mostly archival material. This is exemplified at Park Point, a large industrial space across the road from a bustling Lidl, on the edge of Limerick City, where the work is strongest. Richard Proffitt’s multi-layered, wall-based installation, Time Fades Away (2021), consists of an assortment of paintings on paper, clay sculptures, clothes, jewellery and other ephemera. A pale pink clay face sticks its tongue out; a small white bell hangs from a string; a pumpkin is painted in Proffitt’s idiosyncratic style. This is the detritus of a ‘personal archive’ and as I peer into the psyche of the artist’s life, the soundscapes of various video works echo throughout the space. Mario Rizzi’s The Little Lantern (2019) plays in a black box nearby, chronicling the work of Danish educator, Anni Kanafani. Sitting in what appears to be her office, Kanafani tells the remarkable story of how she set up kindergartens in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon since the 1970s, following the assassination of her husband, Ghassan Kanafani, an influential writer of the Palestinian resistance. These personal accounts are interspersed with clips of the children and their teachers, as well as a theatrical staging of The Little Lantern, a fairytale originally written by Ghassan for his young niece, Lamis, who also died in the car bomb explosion that killed him. Indeed, the emotional heft of these works continues. A large multifaceted presentation of the Reconciliation of Blood Feuds Campaign 1990-1991 takes centre stage at Park Point, led by research-
