Technologies of Peace: Give Imma’s sprawling exhibition the time and attention it deserves
Technologies of Peace brings together works from seventeen European nations, tracing the tangled routes from conflict to reconciliation across the period 1989‑2026. Set in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the show resists simple optimism, instead foregrounding the uneasy paradoxes that accompany any attempt to imagine peace.
At the entrance, Ursula Burke’s Peach Caryatid looms in knitted robes, its tears staining the soft fabric. The classical figure‑support is re‑imagined as a commentary on domestic labour and the hidden costs of democracy.
Nearby, Sanja Ivekovic’s Invisible Women of Solidarity (2009‑10) inscribes the names of forgotten Polish Solidarity activists, while Christodoulos Panayiotou presents seven “pulp paintings” made from demonetised euro notes, a muted palette that hints at the violence hidden behind a shared currency.
Border politics surface in Driton Selmani’s Tell Me Where I Am From (2012), an embroidered map stitched from collective memories of Kosovo, and in Nika Autor’s video Red Forests (2022), which maps the spread of razor‑wire along EU frontiers. Rita Duffy transforms Northern‑Ireland watchtowers into reclaimed nature in Watchtower 2, and Anthony Haughey documents lingering militarised landscapes in his Disputed Territory photographs.
A wall‑long timeline runs from 1968 onward, reminding viewers of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Battle of the Bogside, and the global upheavals that shaped today’s politics. Within that sweep, Cathy Wilkes’s small installation Untitled (2021) evokes the quiet aftermath of Northern‑Ireland bombings, focusing on fragility and loss.
Later sections celebrate grassroots agency. Malgorzata Mirga‑Tas collaborates with Romani activists to create textile portraits of community leaders; Aleksandar Battista Ilic, Ivana Keser and Tomislav Gotovac turn weekend walks into performance pieces that capture a fleeting sense of freedom. Mladen Stilinovic’s banner “An artist who cannot speak English is no artist” (1992) exposes linguistic hierarchies, while Sejla Kameric’s rotating sign flips between “Refugees will come” and “Refugees welcome”, exposing the ambivalence of EU border rhetoric.
Words and media are further interrogated in Locky Morris’s Comm (1992), which monumentalises smuggled prison notes, and Alán Carrasco’s History Loves Paradoxes (2023), a grid of newspaper mastheads all translating the word “truth”. The exhibition also features works by Frances Hegarty, the collective Slavs and Tatars, and Goshka Macuga, adding further tonal variety.
Despite its ambitious scope, the show can feel sprawling; patience rewards the viewer with moments of quiet beauty, such as William McKeown’s glowing Open Drawing – Primrose #2 (2003) or Marina Abramović’s austere The Hero (2021). In the end, Technologies of Peace reminds us that peace is a practice built on countless small gestures, and that the very act of exhibiting these works is itself a testament to artistic freedom.