Trouble in the Troubles Archive; picturing the Northern Irish conflict through a digital collection

Institutionally supported digital art collections may be considered part of the canonical narrativizing of art history.

In NI, Troubles Art occupies a prime position within our art histories. Its privileged status is underscored by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland support for and maintenance of an online Troubles Archive and Troubles Art collection.

The Archive is described by the ACNI as ‘a web-based inclusive resource that reflects the relevant work of all parts of the arts community in Northern Ireland during the years of the conflict’. Within the Troubles Art subsection there are 194 artworks by men and 32 artworks by women.

This digital curation of artwork reflects the gendering of the NI conflict politically and socially across public and private space, extending gender exclusions into cyberspace. In addition to the collection’s under-representation of women artists, there are problematic sexualised images of women in artworks made by men. This paper proposes a feminist intervention within the Troubles Archive which necessarily reflects intervention strategies within bricks-and-mortar canonical structures. It is not a matter of simply adding women’s names to a digital dataset.

It is necessary to first unravel the contexts around the production and management of digital resources as they relate to collecting, curation and classification.