EXCAVATION BY ANTHONY HAUGHEY
CURATED BY HELEN CAREY
23rd January – 13th March 2015
Anthony Haughey is an artist who explores contested territories in Ireland and Europe. In a premier for Limerick City Gallery of Art, Haughey returned to Bosnia to make a new film. UNresolved reflects on the twentieth anniversary of genocide in Srebrenica. Haughey presents a haunting memorial to the victims of the Bosnian war of 1992-95. The title relates to the UN Security Resolution 819, passed on the 16th April 1993 declaring Srebrenica as a ‘safe’ area for Muslim refugees – the prelude to what was the largest act of genocide in Europe since the holocaust. Following Haughey’s earlier work in Bosnia, between 1998-2002, he gained exclusive access to buildings and atrocity sites in Serb controlled territory, areas that have hitherto been off limits. Breaking the silence of this film is a recording of eyewitness accounts of massacre victims collated from archives such as Human Rights Watch and also directly from people encountered on research visits to Bosnia, with accounts of resistance and survival, testimonies from young Dutch soldiers who were serving in Srebrenica and conflicting accounts from UN personnel and Serb military commanders. The film explores ideological and political narratives informing this emerging and contested history. As Walter Benjamin stated, ‘articulating the past historically does not mean recognizing it ‘the way it really was.’ It means appropriating a memory as it flashes up in a moment of danger’ (1990).
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Limerick City Gallery exhibitions