Visualising a minority language community? Visual art and Community Festivals in the Connemara Gaeltacht (2010 – 2015)

Abstract

Recent work by scholars of Irish Studies has established the significance of images of the West of Ireland in the fields of visual arts and literature. However, the discourse surrounding these arguments has been produced from an Anglophone perspective, defining the West as an undifferentiated “other”, signifying an idealized and romanticized Irishness. My research extends the scope of this discourse, examining visual art production in the West of Ireland in the light of specific local cultural contexts, in this case the bilingual context of community arts festivals in the rural Connemara Gaeltacht (Note: Gaeltacht refers to an area where Irish is in use as a primary community language). Specifically, in my project, I will be looking at the activities of two community arts festival in the Coisfharraige coastal area (2010 - 2015) in order to bring to the fore complex roles played by visual art activities within a nuanced Gaeltacht context. In doing so I draw on literature from the fields of Irish Studies, Place-based Art Studies and Festival Studies to argue that tensions around language and identity have strongly influenced visual art production in the Gaeltacht.