By Caio Santos Rodrigues, DIS Cross Cultural Communication student, Spring 2015
It was Tuesday, and according to the schedule our instructor gave us, we had a two-hour drive to Londonderry, which was north of downtown Belfast. We got off right outside the Bogside Artists’ Studio, where we met our guide for the next hour, Tom Kelly. He, along with William Kelly and Kevin Hasson, form the Bogside Artists. The group is named after the neighborhood they live in, Derry, and where they have painted a total of 12 murals that together form The People’s Gallery.
They first began working together in 1993, while The Troubles took place. The Troubles was a 30-year conflict that occurred in Northern Ireland. It started from a conflict of interests: there were the Irish Loyalists, or Unionists, who were usually Protestant and wanted to remain within the United Kingdom, and there were the Irish Republicans, or Nationalists, who were mostly Catholics who wanted to let go of the U.K. and be part of the Republic. There was also discrimination against Catholics by Unionist government officials, which the Catholics protested against; the Unionists repressed them with violence, and from there it was a slippery slope. Catholic paramilitary groups, the most infamous one the Irish Republican Army (I.R.A.), were formed to combat the British military; in response, Protestant paramilitary groups, such as the Ulster Volunteer Force (U.V.F.), were created.
The Bogside Artists’ goal was to depict the events that occurred during The Troubles – not influenced by any political party. “We paint things as we see them,” Tom told us during the tour.
And they saw many things. One of the first murals we saw had been created as part of a project in partnership with local Catholic and Protestant children. It had colorful squares and the silhouette of a white dove over them. Another mural depicted Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and John Hume, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate for his work in the peace negotiations that lead to the Good Friday Agreement. There was a bridge in the center, as a symbol that connected both the four leaders to peace and the Nationalists with the Unionists.
One of the most interesting murals I found was called “Bernadette”, which depicted a teenage girl speaking on a megaphone, along with another girl next to her. Behind them, teenage boys with covered faces threw what seemed to be stones, and further behind, a mural that read “You Are Now Entering Free Derry”. Although paramilitary groups mostly involved males, women also played a role during The Troubles, which was exactly what Tom tried to show with this mural.
Tom’s descriptions of the murals and comments during the tour gave the impression that he and the other Bogside Artists were revolutionaries, rebels fighting against the system, speakers of the people of Derry during – and after – The Troubles. He would say things such as “As artists, we are not in the business of creating heroes,” or “nobody got their hands on our pockets, we will just tell you the way it is.” His tone was assertive and he spoke of his artistic values and vision with the passion of a preacher – or a politician, depending on how you saw it – in a way that one couldn’t help but be engaged. I found myself nodding my head in agreement and listening close to his words several times. I hadn’t really thought about his position on the issue only until after I left.
Although Tom said that the Bogside Artists painted things the way they were – which implies a lack of bias – he must have seen things somewhat partial to the Catholic side: after all, the Bogside is a Catholic neighborhood, which was clear by the many Tricolor flags hanging in post along Rossville Street, where the murals were displayed. Many of the adolescents and kids displayed in the murals were people Tom knew personally. One specific mural, called “Death of Innocence,” depicted Annette McGavigan, Tom’s first love and first kiss.
There was a Palestinian flag hanging at the top of one of the lamp posts. It reminded me of my class’s tour of Falls Road, the Catholic side of the main road through west of Belfast. At Falls Road, there were many murals depicting support for Palestine and critics to Israel; one mural showed support to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, which was also present in the Bogside. Connecting both things, I started to notice a pattern where Nationalists supported minority groups who were also seemingly oppressed by majority groups. The neighborhood’s stance on the Nationalist vs. Unionist conflict was clear after I read a plaque, which was halfway through a light post, which read “BRITS OUT NOW IRA”.
As a Brazilian I don’t recall noticing so many non-verbal cues of support to a cause, organization, or person in Brazil. In the United States I have seen similar occurrences, but it occurred more on the individual level: cars with Confederate flag-license plates, California’s Grizzly Bear stickers, New York Yankees snapbacks. I would be hard-pressed, however, to claim that such non-verbal cues carry much meaning or bias in contemporary United States (perhaps the Confederate flag-license plate would).
I have found much more explicit examples of personal or collective bias on media outlets. Just take a look at the websites of magazines such as The New Republic and The Nation and compare them to The National Review‘s website. On the days that followed Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential candidacy announcement, The New Republic had three articles from three different writers arguing why Senator Cruz would not win the elections. The articles on The National Review, on the other hand, congratulated or supported the senator’s candidacy.
So what is the issue here? The issue is that the Bogside Artists might not be aware of their own biases. Although their message was not influenced by a political party, the setting of the murals and their own background might have influenced their work. They are three Catholic artists living in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood. Regardless of intent, the fact is that the murals’ messages carry the artists’ biases. This is the reason why in 2005 an exhibition of the Artists’ work in Berlin was cancelled last-minute by Herr Walter Momper, then Berlin’s President of the Parliament. Momper claimed that the murals showed only one perspective of The Troubles, and that the German government could not support such exhibition to occur in Berlin.
Tom mentioned the Berlin incident, but he did not tell us why the President of the Parliament had cancelled the visit; instead, I recall him saying something about censure. He pointed at one of his pictures hanging on the wall, holding a poster-sized version of his “Petrol Bomber” mural, outside of the parliament in Berlin.
Perhaps I should cut Tom and the other artists some slack about their intentions. After all, they did not choose to live in the area where they lived – they were born Catholic. When they were creating the murals, they did not see Catholics but victims of a bloody conflict. Some of them were even close friends. One of them was Tom’s first love.
That might be a part of being an artist. When you are an artist, and you are passionate about your work, sometimes it might be difficult to see the other side of the story.
Cross Cultural Communications in Belfast 