Learning Resilience: The Irish Pavilion Explores the Culture of Remote Islands at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale

Written by Maria-Cristina Florian
Published on May 09, 2023

The National Pavilion of Ireland will present an exhibition titled “In Search of Hy-Brasil” at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. The pavilion set out to explore diverse cultures, communities, and experiences of Ireland’s remote islands in the search for new ways of inhabiting the world. A team of five architects has been selected as the curators of the exhibition: Peter Carroll, Peter Cody, Elizabeth Hatz, Mary Laheen, and Joseph Mackey. The pavilion will be open to the public from May 20th to November 26th, 2023; afterward, the installation will tour Ireland in 2024, bringing voices from peripheral locations into mainstream conversations around our global future.

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To develop the theme, the curatorial team studied the island landscapes of Inis Meáin (Inishmaan), Sceilg Mhicíl (Skellig Michael), and Cliara (Clare Island) through drawing, survey, film, sound, model, mapping, and story. The resulting exhibition aims to create an immersive experience, drawing on the connections between the social fabric, cultural landscape, and ecology of these islands. The installation also highlights renewable energy sources, ethical food production, and biodiversity in the context of the islands’ sustainable methods of livelihood. Large limestone slabs from the islands and their related ocean floor will be on display, alongside a series of hands-on tactile exhibits.

Read on to discover the statement from the official press release.

Meet the Participants of the International Architecture Exhibition at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale

The current world order of endless expansion, extraction, and exploitation has passed. All the evidence confirms that this approach does not accord with our everyday human needs, or with the life of the planet. In order to transform redundant ways of living, we must de-colonize our minds and re-configure new ways of inhabiting the world. As we travel through the tangible and intangible threads of our islands, encountering the forgotten, the remote, the overlooked, and the yet unknown, we are led to new vistas. Visceral encounters are the seed, root, and branch of new stories.

Responding to the theme, The Laboratory of the Future - selected by the curator of the Biennale Architettura 2023, Lesley Lokko – the exhibition of the Ireland Pavilion, In Search of Hy-Brasil, will present fieldwork from Ireland’s remote islands, investigating their diverse cultures, communities, and experiences. The Pavilion is curated by a team of five architects - Peter Carroll, Peter Cody, Elizabeth Hatz, Mary Laheen, and Joseph Mackey. Ireland at Venice, the participation of Ireland at the International Art and Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, is an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council.

In Ireland, myth, language, and landscape remain intrinsically linked. The Irish language preserves the deep resonances that exist between humankind and the natural world. Hy-Brasil is a mythical Atlantic island that embodies the possibility for the re-imagination of the island of Ireland and its ocean territory.

The curators have studied the island landscapes of Inis Meáin (Inishmaan), UNESCO World Heritage site Sceilg Mhicíl (Skellig Michael), and Cliara (Clare Island) through drawing, survey, film, sound, model, mapping, and story. The installation will offer an immersive experience that draws connections between the social fabric, cultural landscape, and ecology of these islands, shifting between the global and the local, the territorial and the intimate.

To raise awareness of the islanders’ management of resources and their balancing of the delicate equilibrium between culture and nature, the installation will focus on renewable energy, ethical food production, and biodiversity, capturing the islands’ sustainable methods of livelihood through drawing, models, film, sound, writing, and language.

To highlight the natural cycle of circadian rhythms and the detrimental impact of light pollution, while mimicking the natural conditions on the islands, natural light will be used throughout the installation as the key source of illumination.