Northern Ireland
Art has followed the trajectory of the human experience since the earliest Paleolithic cave paintings of animals at Lascaux in the Dordogne region of southwestern France, dating back 20,000 years. And if art is a reflection of life, then it must be a reflection of all of life’s idiosyncrasies and strife. As humans have engaged in conflict, both peaceful and violent, from our early history, art has followed. Depictions of war abound in art history and date back centuries, from Paolo Uccello’s The Battle of San Romano, dating to the mid-1400s and showcasing Florence’s victory over Siena, to the early 1800s and Francisco de Goya’s Third of May, 1808, depicting Spanish resistance to Napoleon’s army, to Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, from 1937, a commemoration of an atrocity of the Spanish Civil War.
More recently, artists have expressed their feelings about conflict in public spaces. Among the most well-known public art of the modern era are the murals depicted on Belfast, Ireland’s “Peace Walls.” These murals tell the origins and history of the conflict known as “The Troubles,” an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted roughly 30 years, from the late 1960s to the signing of peace accords in 1998. The conflict centered around the status of Northern Ireland. “Unionists,” or “loyalists,” who were for historical reasons mostly Protestants from the Northern Irish province of Ulster, wanted Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom. Irish nationalists, or “republicans,” who were mostly Irish Catholics, wanted Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and become part of a united Ireland. Beginning in approximately 1968/69, the Troubles were functionally a low-level war between these two sides, involving the use of guerilla warfare, terrorist tactics, and socio-political oppression and disenfranchisement. The etymology of the term “Troubles” has been traced to a newspaper that reported on one of the first acts of violence that took place during the conflict; the term was effective nomenclature because it is a neutral euphemism that avoids ascribing blame to any of the participants.
During the course of the conflict and in the years subsequent, so-called “Peace Walls” were constructed to separate Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods in an attempt to prevent movement between adjoining districts in the city and thereby quell the violence. While most of the walls (99 in total) are located in Belfast, the largest city in Northern Ireland, there are walls in other parts of the region, with more than 20 total miles of walls throughout Northern Ireland. From the earliest construction of the walls, artists began to paint murals on them depicting various aspects of The Troubles, encompassing everything from scenes from Irish history to pictures of paramilitary groups preparing for battle. Some walls were adopted by Unionists/Loyalists and others by Nationalists/Republicans, and by implicit, unspoken mutual agreement, neither side has defaced the others’ art.
As the conflict evolved, so, too, did the murals. Aggressive, militaristic images were gradually replaced by images and messages of peace. One especially popular mural depicts American civil rights icons, including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., alongside international figures associated with peace and human rights, including Bob Marley and Nelson Mandela. More recently, some murals have tended to feature more traditional “street art,” including graffiti and informal messages of peace scrawled on the walls by visitors worldwide. And while, for most of their existence, the walls were an informal project, in recent years, arts councils and local governments have begun to commission new murals as public art.
One of the most famous walls is the “International Wall” close to Cupar Way, which is the longest of the Belfast walls. It was built in 1969, at the beginning of The Troubles, and is composed of four meters of concrete wall mounted by three meters of metal sheeting topped off by a further six meters of mesh fence, making the wall nearly 45 feet high and older than the Berlin Wall was at the time it was destroyed. One of the most notable murals on this wall is one based on Picasso’s 1937 powerful anti-war painting, Guernica (Picasso’s famous work showing the devastation of Nazi bombing during the Spanish Civil War), painted by two artists, one Catholic and one Protestant, who worked together despite their backgrounds to help foster collaboration and cross-community initiatives.
Individual murals have also attained significant renown. One of the most easily recognized is the mural depicting Bobby Sands, a member of the Irish Republican Army who died while on hunger strike in prison on weapons charges. Sands is a polarizing figure, considered a terrorist by some and a heroic martyr by others, and his mural remains controversial. But the mural that has attained the widest international recognition is that on “Free Derry Corner.” The mural is simple, consisting of the words “You Are Now Entering Free Derry” painted on the side of a gable wall. The slogan was first painted in 1969 after a riot that took place in nearby Derry; after the riot, law enforcement avoided the area for a time, giving rise to the nickname “Free Derry.” Despite significant changes in the area surrounding the mural (including the destruction of the row of houses to which the wall was attached, with the wall itself being left intact), the mural has remained since 1969. The words themselves always stay the same, presented in bold-faced, black lettering, but the wall itself is frequently repainted with themes as varied as AIDS awareness, women’s rights, the Palestinian cause, gay rights, and numerous international causes.
Despite the Peace Walls’ historical value, their days could be numbered. Northern Irish governments instituted plans to bring down all of the Peace Walls in the coming years to integrate disparate elements of society better and foster a sense of inclusion and harmony. Unfortunately, the walls have cultivated division and “otherness” for over 50 years in this complex society. Middle-aged adults have lived their entire lives under the walls imposing presence, making them believe these barriers are simply part of the natural surroundings - while also subconsciously internalizing their more profound meaning. But whether the walls will finally be removed is an open question, as some believe tensions still simmer and that the walls are integral to maintaining an uneasy peace.
For too long, the public art of Belfast depicted scenes of strife and heartache. Whatever the fate of the murals, Justice Murals supports recent efforts to use them to foster positive sentiments of peace, hope, and goodwill. It is our hope, as it is the hope of so many around the world that those sentiments will take root and flourish among the peoples of Northern Ireland.
