To the Edge of Your World – Anita Groener

“As we survey Groener’s heartbreaking elegies for a fallen world, the little thing that remains, undaunted, like a whistle in the dark, is the one called hope.”
Joseph R.Wolin, in a newly commissioned text on ‘To the Edge of Your World’.

To the Edge of  Your World asks what it means to be human today. The exhibition is a profound meditation on loss, displacement, exile, and war. Confronted by the bloody conflicts, forced migrations, and enduring injustices of current history, the artist began using humble and ephemeral materials such as twigs, twine, cardboard, and cut paper to speak of the fragility of existence and the interconnectedness of individual and universal experience.

Nonetheless, her work holds out the possibilities of resilience and renewal. “It is a questioning of perception,” she says, “and a longing to get closer to understanding human conscience.”

Anita Groener is a highly respected visual artist who works in sculpture, installation, drawing, animation, and video. She was born in the Netherlands, where she received her BA at the Møller Institute, Tilburg, in 1980 and her MA at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Arnhem, in 1982.

That same year, she moved to Ireland, which has become her adopted home. From 1982 to 2014, she taught at Technological University (TU) Dublin, where she was head of Fine Art from 2004 to 2006. In 2005, Groener was elected a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s national academy of artists. The artist’s work is included in the collections of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Arts Council of Ireland, the Irish State Art Collection, 21c Museum Hotels, USA, as well as other public, corporate, and private collections at home and abroad.

Following exhibition at Highlanes Gallery, To the Edge of Your World will travel to the Academy Art Museum in Easton, MD, from 26 July until 23 October, before it goes to Bader & Simon Gallery, Cincinnati, OH, USA.

In 2022, Groener travelled across the American South, visiting historic sites significant to the Civil Rights Movement. She undertook this journey accompanied by John Relman, one of the country’s most prominent civil rights lawyers in recent years. With Relman as her guide, the artist explored civil rights museums, trails, and memorials in Jackson, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee; and Selma and Montgomery, Alabama. The historical, contemporary, and systemic injustices starkly manifested during this road trip have profoundly shaped Groener’s new works.

The artist notes that, much like civil rights, human rights are endorsed in most countries yet are never guaranteed. The increasing number of individuals in the world compelled to flee their homes due to violence, climate change, or oppressive political regimes continues to rise, contributing to what Groener perceives as a global existential crisis: “Bearing our past, every second of our lives is lived looking forward. We construct our narratives through time and place. We witness personal and global conflicts and crises that expose the vulnerability of life. We persist in hoping for a better future.”