eva 2027 platform commissions

We are now welcoming EVA 2027 Platform Commission proposals in response to the thematic statement detailed below.

Thematic Statement / Here or Elsewhere
The 2027 Platform Commissions coincides with EVA’s 50th anniversary edition, which will critically reflect on key artistic moments and broader political changes that have taken place in Ireland over the past five decades.

Thirty years ago, and two months after he died from an AIDS-related illness, an artwork by the Cuban-American artist Félix González-Torres was presented across Limerick’s O’Connell Street as part of the 1996 edition of EVA. The artwork, Untitled (America) – a simple arrangement of illuminated bulbs that hung across the street and above the passing traffic – was the first outdoor presentation of a seminal series of ‘light string’ works that established Félix González-Torres as one of the most important and influential artists of his generation. Prior to his death, the artist described the choice of title, Untitled (America), explaining that “America has always been an unattainable dream, a place to dream about … The America that I now know is still a place of light, a place of opportunities, of risks, of justice, of racism, of injustice, of hunger and excess, of pleasure and growth.” The lights across O’Connell Street might have held a deeply personal resonance for Félix González-Torres, but their resonance could also be considered in respect of Ireland in the 20th century, with its downward economy and dim prospects leading to mass emigration over many decades.

This is not only a story of how art creates horizons of thinking and imagining other places, but how these imaginations are themselves grounded in the dynamics of real, historical, and situated experience. At a time when traditionally-aspirational places like America or cities like Berlin are no longer guaranteed harbours of civil liberty, artistic livelihood and opportunity, the question of ‘here or elsewhere’ becomes a practical strategy of artistic survival and sustainability.

We invite proposals from artists for projects that will be rooted in Limerick and that variously and tangentially respond to the 1996 presentation of Félix González-Torres’s Untitled (America) and the orbit of the artwork’s ideas and references. This could include proposals that – directly reference the original work – engage with the desires of being other places – address 1990s Ireland – problematise (Western) imaginations of international destiny – or offer a relevant response in ways we have not yet considered.