What does it mean to be human in an age defined by rupture, migration, and precarity? Anita Groener’s multi-media practice is a profound meditation on loss, conflict, exile, resilience, renewal, and hope. She maps the fragile architectures of memory, trauma, home, displacement, and belonging, capturing the deeply felt personal and universal consequences and visualising the emotional landscapes of exile and resilience through ephemeral materials and intricate forms. Her work frames remembrance as a form of moral and political resistance for the interconnectedness of individual experiences, histories, and world events. Groener's work echoes the fragility of existence, probing the psychological effects of human tragedy and the resilience that may result.
Dutch Irish artist Anita Groener creates sculptures, drawings, films, and paintings. In 1982, she moved from the Netherlands to Ireland, which has become her adopted home. She received her BA from the Möller Institute in Tilburg in 1980 and her MA from the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Arnhem in 1982.
Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions across Ireland, the Netherlands, and the U.S.A., and has appeared in group exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; 21c Museum Hotels in Durham, Cincinnati, and Bentonville; Jane Lombard Gallery, New York; Columbia Circle, Shanghai; Riverside Art Museum, Beijing; and Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. Groener is included in the permanent collections of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Arts Council of Ireland, the Irish State Art Collection, VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam, and 21c Museum Hotels in the USA. From 1983 to 2014, she taught at Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin), where she served as Head of Fine Art from 2004 to 2006. In 2005, Groener was elected a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s national academy of artists. During 2018–19, she received an Arts Council Touring Award for bringing the exhibition 'The Past Is a Foreign Country' to various venues in Ireland. Groener’s most recent exhibition,
'To the Edge of Your World ' opened at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris in 2023 and travelled to the Museum Rijswijk, The Hague (2024); the Academy Art Museum, Easton, Maryland (2025); and the Bader & Simon Gallery, Cincinnati (2026).
Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland and the Mondriaan Fund to tour this exhibition in Europe and the US.
.Ps. Groener is pronounced like sooner in English ;)
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