Boasting a host of independent bookstores, small theaters, art exhibitions, and acclaimed literary figures, Belfast is a liberal arts major’s dream. Now that I’ve called this place home for two months, I can say the city lives up to its reputation as a vibrant arts and culture capital. Events and panels are happening all the time, and the wider community is very active and engaged with the arts. I think this popularity can be ascribed in part to art’s acceptance of all points of view: not that every piece strives for universality, but that the medium itself flexibly adapts to shine light on what the forward-marching peace process has left in the dark.
Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland has invested approximately £1.5 million in public arts projects promoting peace and reconciliation. One project these funds have gone towards is the "Re-Imaging Communities Programme," launched in 2006 with the goal of replacing divisive, sectarian imagery with more positive and community-centric images. The contentious program has painted over Loyalist and Republican murals in the Shankill and Falls areas and replaced them with happier, nonviolent images. The “Women’s Quilt,”a 2015 mural created by the Lower Shankill Women’s Group, proclaims love and equality for all. This mural replaced a paramilitary mural depicting the burning of Protestant homes at the Troubles’ outset. For some, the program has provided critical agency in re-imagining an integrated and communal future. But for others, the program is literally whitewashing the past, falling in line with an official narrative of peace and progress which misrepresents some community members’ feelings and experience. It also makes an implicit aesthetic and ethical judgment, labeling Troubles-era expressions of identity as offensive and antagonistic.
While these criticisms accuse art of supporting a statist agenda, questions have also been raised surrounding out-of-state actors, namely the plethora of “outsider” artists whose work has referenced the North Irish conflict. Controversy clung to the decision to grant Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind the commission for the peace-building center to be built on the site of the notorious Maze Prison. The Maze Prison held paramilitary terrorists during the Troubles and was famously home to 10 Republican hunger strikers in 1981. Critics argued Libeskind’s design was not specific to the North Irish context; Libeskind strongly refuted this allegation. Additionally, others have taken aim at the expensive, large-scale installations around Belfast meant to commemorate the city’s commitment to progress. RISE, a £400,000 metal sculpture of concentric spheres by English artist Wolfgang Buttress, is meant to symbolize the rising sun and new hope for Belfast’s future. However, its colloquial nickname—“Balls on the Falls”—suggest that locals feel disconnected from the piece’s sentimental aspiration.
But this suspicion of non-native points of view is nothing new. Belfast-born poet Seamus Heaney faced enormous pushback from local critics for the bog-body series contained in his controversial 1975 volume North. This handful of poems was inspired by photos of the archaeological discovery of Iron-Age bodies preserved in bogs throughout Northern Europe. Looking at the photographs, Heaney refigures the bodies as those of the Disappeared (suspected informers who were abducted, murdered, and secretly buried by the Irish Republican Army) and the young women tarred, feathered, and drowned in Republican communities for cavorting with British soldiers. Heaney, who at this point had moved out of Northern Ireland and was splitting time between Wicklow and the United States, was seen as a deserter. He was accused of aestheticizing and appropriating the conflict for reputational and financial gain. Despite repudiation from his native community, Heaney nevertheless went on to great international acclaim and was regarded abroad as a voice of the people of Northern Ireland.
Artists solidly within the community, however, are generally accepted and well-received. For example, the traveling portrait series “Silent Testimony,” created by Belfast-based painter Colin Davidson, was met with instant praise from critics and community alike. The exhibition foregrounding the faces of 18 Troubles victims attracted 60,000 visitors to Belfast Ulster Museum when it opened in 2015. Furthermore, North Irish playwright Owen McCafferty’s celebrated body of work often stages the persistent scars and divisions in post-conflict society. This in-group bias demonstrates the sensitivity to “authentic” perspectives on a sectarian conflict which, 20 years on, still feels just barely put to rest. It seems Northern Ireland wants to safeguard art’s liberation of marginalized points of view by forcibly resisting the overwriting by outside narratives. In a world which often doubts the efficacy of art, Northern Ireland shows us the healing power of listening.