We are excited to see our own Moran Been-noon – ‘Here Nor There’ exhibition open at Axis Ballymun.
Here nor There
This exhibition invites us to reflect on the connection between ethnicity and our own ability to belong. The artwork is a collection of the artist’s digital and physical thought experiments that respond to familiar concepts of settling down and feeling at home: putting down roots, building a nest, and understanding one’s place through the embodiment of objects and actions found in folkloric and ethnic knowledge. These experiments of belonging are conducted in the context of life as an outsider, remaining unsettled, being neither here nor there.
Mixing moving image and audio pieces with objects that symbolise fragments of the artist’s ethnic identity, the artwork encourages to perceive ethnicity as a multilayered and intricate theme, and within this, consider the complexities of contemporary Irish identity and it being a worthwhile topic for exploration.
Moran Been-noon is a Dublin-based visual artist and independent curator. She predominantly makes moving image installations, using animation, archived material, and non-traditional projections. Her work explores post-migration living and using her own identity and lived experience, how compound ethnicities influence one’s sense of belonging. The work incorporates studies of the body’s engagement with ideas of place, culture, and society. She is interested in the relationship between folkloric places (real or imagined) and the self (foreign or local).
The exhibition was developed in 2023 with support from South Tipperary Arts Centre. Research and production of the work was kindly supported by the Arts Council Ireland, and by Tog Hackerspace and its members.