An Irish Artist’s Travels from Buenos Aires to Araxá

Abstract

In 2020, during lockdown as an Irish emigrant in the UK, I re-evaluated being Irish in a foreign country as I examined pictures taken in Latin America during my travels, as artist-in-residence at Zona Imaginaria. This paper reviews three contemporary artists in Argentina and Brazil, Mónica Girón, Mariana López and Pedro Lopes, whose work focuses on diverse cultures, history seen in this context, and colonisation and emigration as influences on three artists’ work. In Brazil, I visited farms, small towns and Minas Gerais state, and compared life there with my native Ireland. The effects on the contemporary art and culture of both countries due to colonisation, is noted by an Irish artist, heavily influenced since this trip in her own artwork.