Ursula Burke is an Irish artist who grew up in the Republic of Ireland and later lived in post-conflict Northern Ireland and uses this experience of living as a part of two cultures as a starting point to develop a dynamic practice that reflects on aesthetics and ethics of different cultures. Her work incorporates porcelain sculpture, soft sculpture, embroidery, and drawing, to investigate identity politics of historical and colonial eras ranging from tradition to modernity.
Burke explores precarity in the social realm, power relations in the political arena, and post-conflict histories relative to Northern Ireland. Her work creates a conceptual bridge between antiquity and the contemporary, mining art historical tropes of representation and display. Mediated through craft-based processes re-configured in a fine art context, her approach destabilises conventions around traditional techniques of making by using unexpected juxtapositions of materials, processes, and images with a desire that bends towards the surreal.
Visit Ursula Burke’s website here
May – June 2025 – joining the Dwell Here Research Intensive Week from 14 – 20 May 2025
Research Focus
Ursula Burke will focus on the study of epigenetics in relationship to inherited trauma, especially within post-conflict contexts such as Northern Ireland. Having lived for over twenty years in Belfast, during and after the peace process, she has developed a unique continuum of exploration between political and aesthetic inquiries into trauma, wounding, and repair in her practice. She will also explore the reverberation of trauma through generations and the effects on the body, investigating somatic practices as potential sites of healing. In 2004, a spate of teenage suicides happened quite rapidly and in succession in Ardoyne, North Belfast, an area which is known as a Republican stronghold. Seen through the lens of epigenetic science, is it possible that a predisposition of trauma and depression may be switched on genetically, and passed down from the parent to the child in sites of conflict? What would the implications of such research mean for post-colonial Ireland or sites further afield such as Israel and Palestine?
Dwell Here offers participants a simple proposition: to commit to this time and place while thinking deeply about its urgencies. Together we are curious to learn what can be activated or challenged through the process of dwelling. IMMA encourages reflection across the following themes to consider geographical, historical, political and cultural concepts of Ireland as a starting point to expand and connect international contexts through similarities and differences:
Technologies of Peace – to consider commemorative landscapes and memories of peace (as a dream, movement, or value) while generating perspectives on sustainable coexistence.
The Irish Paradigm – Welcomes artistic research that creates intimacy and connections, while celebrating the perceived agility and freedoms of operating on the periphery. As a small island on the edge of Europe, Ireland often has a challenging relationship with ‘the centre’.
The Museum as a Site of Vibration – consider how the museum and site can create new vibrations and rhythms within the built legacy of empire. How can museums make visible cultural shifts, including erased, censored or marginalised histories, as well as sustainability, planetary care, sharing and hospitality.