“As we survey Groener’s heartbreaking elegies for a fallen world, the little thing that remains, undaunted, like a whistle in the dark, is the one called hope.”
Joseph R. Wolin, writer, curator & art critic, on the exhibition To The Edge of Your World
"This is not our past; it is very much our present. For all of us, including refugees, the feeling of helplessness is the most potent and crippling. Yet, there are many ways to help. Groener’s work suggests that the place to start is at the individual level, one-to-one, one at a time."
Sean Kissane, curator of exhibitions, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, on the exhibition The Past Is a Foreign Country
Anita Groener (B. 1958, Netherlands) received her BA at the Möller Institute, Tilburg, in 1980 and her MA at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Arnhem, in 1982. That same year, she moved to Ireland, which has become her adopted home. From 1982 to 2014, she taught at Technological University (TU) Dublin, where she was the Head of Fine Art from 2004 to 2006. In 2005, Groener was elected a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s national academy of artists.
In 2018–19, she received an Arts Council Touring Award for bringing The Past Is a Foreign Country to Limerick City Gallery of Art and travelled to The Dock in Carrick-on-Shannon, The LAB Gallery in Dublin, and the West Cork Arts Centre in Skibbereen. Groener’s most recent exhibition, To the Edge of Your World, travelled to Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris and Museum Rijswijk in The Hague in 2023–24. It will open in Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Ireland, and the Academy Art Museum in Easton, MD, in July 2025. The artist's work is included in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Arts Council of Ireland, the Irish State Art Collection, 21c Museum Hotels, and other public, corporate, and private collections.
Ps. Groener is pronounced like sooner in English ;)
Talks and In Conversations