Eimear Walshe's surreal art explores Irish land politics through sex and history

Irish artist Eimear Walshe creates surreal videos and performances that connect Ireland's housing crisis to intimate desires. Their 2020 video The Land Question humorously examines legal obstacles to public sex while narrating the history of Ireland's nineteenth-century Land League with stick puppets. In Land Cruiser (2022), a park hookup leads to an existential roadtrip narrated through motorway imagery. Walshe's work uses Irish law and land history to critique colonial and capitalist systems with deadpan delivery. Their practice links unaffordable rents to national identity questions arising from British rule. Recent exhibitions include EVA International in Limerick (2020) and Bodies of Knowledge at Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2019). Chris Fite-Wassilak selected Walshe for ArtReview's Future Greats 2023 feature. The artist describes themselves as an inheritor of agrarian radicalism's legacy.