Anita Groener was born and raised in the Netherlands and moved to Dublin, Ireland, where she is based. Since leaving her native country, questions of migration, memory, place, time, and what it means to be human today have catalysed the artist’s practice. She works through drawing, sculpture, painting, video, animation, and installation.
Her work constitutes a profound meditation on war, loss, displacement, exile, resilience, renewal, and hope through installations that painstakingly transform discarded materials such as twigs, twine, and cardboard into delicate sculptural metaphors for the interconnectedness of individual experiences, histories and world events. Her work evokes experiences of displacement and the fragility of existence, as well as probing both the psychological effects of human tragedy and the resilience that may result. “It is a questioning of perception and a longing to get closer to understanding human conscience.”
Her work has been exhibited recently at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris; Museum Rijswijk, the Hague; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Jane Lombard Gallery, New York; Columbus Circle, Shanghai; Riverside Museum, Beijing; Art on Paper, New York; Volta Basel with Gibbons & Nicholas; Stedelijk Museum Schiedam; 21c Museum Hotel Bentonville, Arkansas + 21c Cincinnati + 21c Durham; Witteveen Visual Art Centre, Amsterdam; Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin; Butler Gallery, Kilkenny; Poggiali & Forconi Gallery, Florence; Park013, Tilburg, and Rubicon Gallery Dublin. Collections include The Irish Museum of Modern Art; The Arts Council of Ireland; the State Art Collection, Ireland; 21c Museum Hotels; Sun Communities Inc, USA; European Investment Bank; VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam; Irish National Collection of Contemporary Drawing; AIB; and ABN-AMRO Bank and Facebook EMEA Headquarters. In 2010, she was awarded a residency at the Josef & Anni Albers Foundation, Bethany, CT, USA; in 2014, she was an artist at Point B, Williamsburg, NYC, USA. Commissions have included The Poetry Project, Home, a film/poem for Bealtaine Festival, and Facebook and LinkedIn EMEA Headquarters.
In 2005, she was elected a member of Aosdána, the prestigious official association of Ireland’s preeminent cultural producers. Until 2014, she was a lecturer in Fine Art at TU Dublin, where she also served as the Head of Fine Art from 2004 to 2006. In addition, she served as a member of the Public Art Committee of the Grangegorman Development Agency (2014-2021) and of the Arts Council of Ireland Collection Acquisition Committee(2019-2020). She holds a BA in Fine Art from Moller Institute, Tilburg, and an MA in Painting from de Hogeschool, Arnhem, the Netherlands.
Ps. Groener is pronounced like sooner in English ;)
Talks and In Conversations about my work