Throughout history artists have been to the fore in activist and resistance movements, bringing both personal and political insights that propose new means of comprehending our present state of Endless War.

Chapter Four: Protest and Conflict takes the IMMA Collection as a starting point to explore how artists have worked to subvert power and use art as a conduit for civil disobedience. With a focus on their contributions to movements and events in recent years including Black Lives Matter and The Artists’ Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment, this exhibition celebrates the contributions artists have made to protest as an act of resistance and assertion.

Over the past three decades since the opening of IMMA in 1991, the world has witnessed relentless conflict and turmoil, globally and locally, from Northern Ireland to Palestine, South Africa to Afghanistan, Beirut to Kashmir. Allied to these seismic shifts, we have seen evolutions in forms of protest related to advances in Internet technologies and social media and the channelling of grassroots energies to build responses and affect change.

The exhibition highlights how the personal experiences of the artists are rooted in their political situation. Works documenting feminist forms of protest and the meaning of the body colonised by patriarchal power can be seen alongside works protesting the impact of neo-colonialism in the present. Throughout the exhibition, the conflict in Northern Ireland is explored through a global lens, including the responses of artists as historians, activists, and visual narrators.