TO THE EDGE OF YOUR WORLD | Academy Art Museum, Easton, Maryland, USA, 16 August - 25 October 2025.
This exhibition contemplates loss, displacement, exile, and war, confronting the bloody conflicts, forced migrations, and enduring injustices of current history, yet holds out the possibilities of resilience and renewal. Using humble and ephemeral materials—including twigs, twine, cardboard, and cut paper—that speak of vulnerability, the Irish artist’s sculptural installations consider the interconnectedness of individual and universal experience. A 2022 road trip across the South, visiting sites important to the Civil Rights Movement and America’s unfinished struggle for equality and justice, informed Groener’s most recent sculpture and drawings, adding to her ongoing engagement with the world’s past decade of war and upheaval in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa, and elsewhere.
For this occasion, I produced SHELTER, a new animated video made in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Matt Kresling and the Talbot Interfaith Shelter (TIS) in Easton, which incorporates interviews in which individuals share stories of hardship and determination. Shelter addresses the urgent social and political realities of homelessness and celebrates the transformative work of TIS. The video resonates with the exhibition’s themes of displacement, belonging, and the fragile architecture of memory.
