Using art to explore Ireland's post-colonial identity

The EVA event in Limerick is curated by a Cameroonian who realises that Ireland’s experience as a part of the British Empire raises some interesting questions, writes Alan O’Riordan

IRELAND’S postcolonial identity is a complicated one. Isn’t everyone’s? Perhaps so — yet Ireland’s very status as a colony is a relatively recent assertion among historians and critics. It’s a contested idea that seeks to unpack such factors as the country’s interconnectedness with the colonial centre and its culture, and how our status as Europeans clouds our view of possibly shared colonial experiences in the wider world.

There’s also our part in the imperial enterprise itself, as both coloniser and colonised — an imperial domain that nonetheless was once part of the United Kingdom, sending MPs to London and with a decidedly British metropolis of its own.