The Past Is A Foreign Country asked; What is it to be human today. Through drawings, large scale installations, film, and animation Anita Groener explored the tissue of trauma and loss rooted in this question. Anita Groener makes work for what still needs language, experimenting with both figurative and abstract geography. The deliberately modest means of the work (twigs, paper, pins, twine and gouache) speak to the fragility of life and society that refugee crises expose. Her art asks

The exhibition received an Arts Council Touring and Dissemination Award, and was initiated by the Limerick City Gallery of Art, and toured to The Lab, Dublin and Uilinn, Skibbereen after the Dock in 2019.

A catalogue to accompany this touring exhibition – with contributions from Joseph R. Wolin, writer and curator based in New York City; Séan Kissane, curator Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Suzanne Lynch, Washington DC correspondent for The Irish Times; Razan Ibraheem, Syrian journalist based in Ireland and Peter Sirr, Irish poet, was launched at the opening on Saturday 19th January 2019.

Anita Groener was born in The Netherlands and is based in Dublin, Ireland. In 2005, she was elected a member of Aosdána. Until 2014 she was a lecturer at the Dublin Institute of Technology where she also served as the Head of Fine Art from 2004 to 2006.