Living in Donegal Virtual Exhibition: A socially engaged exhibition project about 27 people who live in Donegal Ireland from diverse cultures.

REF STATEMENT Dr Harriet Purkis
Living in Donegal (2021): an exhibition about people with global connections living in Donegal, Ireland, with video portraits and filmed conversations influenced by video art modes, capturing the voice, body and mannerisms of twenty-seven individuals. Migration is presented through the visual and personal, challenging and innovating community exhibition curation by foregrounding individuals, not themes or groups.
Funding: PEACE IV (EU).

Aims/Research Questions
• How can exhibitions exhibit people?
• How can visual representations of people through portraits communicate their
   persona and identity?
• How can a community museum exhibition about migration go beyond thematic
   displays, becoming a ‘contact zone’ of empathetic communication between
   participants and audiences?

Research Process
1. Experimenting with video art (Wearing, 60 Minutes Silence, 1996; Calle, Voir la
   Mer, 2011) and portraiture (moving portraits, filmed conversations, still portraits)
   to capture a portrayal of self through peoples’ faces, gestures and stories.
2. Designing a virtual exhibition around copresence

Insights and Outcomes
• Challenges dominant museum collecting and display practices from
   anthropology and community exhibitions, which show static and objectified
   images of representative ‘others’ or group people’s stories into themes on text-
   based display boards (Huhn and Anderson 2021, p352).
• Participatory and creative curatorial process; from collecting to videography to 
   design, the presentation of individuals was foregrounded through animated
   agency-driven portraiture, connecting participants and audience “through co-
   creation, expression, and civic dialogue […connecting…] strangers within
   museum spaces.” (Pollard, 2017, p86).

• Exhibitions about migration can ‘just’ be about people. Previous participatory
   museum projects have focused on groups interacting with established
   collections (Lynch and Alberti 2010) or participant interviews and conversations
   “used to identify initial exhibition themes” (Carfora et al, 2024, p.15).

• The virtual exhibition allowed experimentation, embracing “aspects of
   emotions, interest and curiosity” (Ntalla 2014, p105), challenging the dominant
   virtual museum purpose and form (replicating encased artefacts or providing
   accessibility to collection databases).

Dissemination
Exhibition (March 29th, 2020–): https://www.artshow.at/rcc/livingindonegal/
Catalogue: Purkis, H. (2021)