Marianne Keating: An Ciúnas / The Silence

The first exhibition of 2024 was up my alley. Marianne Keating ‘s work addresses Irish histories and the hidden ones from the diaspora, including Irish/Jamaican ties reconstructing them through archival traces. So, obviously, I needed to go to The Showroom London and see her solo exhibition.

It is an immersive three channel film installation which brings complex intersecting narratives of Irish migration during Ireland’s colonial rule by Britain and their legacies in the present and personal accounts. It traces multiple trajectories of migration from Ireland before and after the great famine, the Irish workers on plantations as a new labour force in post-abolition Jamaica, Irish migration to Britain, the generation “lost” since the independence, and continuing to the recent exodus in 2010. And all this was pushed towards migration and indenture for the benefit of the British Empire.

I was alone during the whole screening so you can imagine how much I enjoyed it (and learnt!). It was a proper immersive experience for myself. A simple and intimate setting. You don’t need anything else when you have such a footage in front of you. So far, the most impactful screening I’ve watched in a while.