Eoghan Ryan's Upcoming Solo Show at Edith-Russ-Haus Explores Anarchy Through Video and Performance

Irish artist Eoghan Ryan, selected by Mire Lee for ArtReview's Future Greats 2024, creates emotionally charged works across moving image, installation, performance, puppetry, drawing, text, and collage. His practice investigates emergence, provisionality, and solidarity with marginalized subjects. The video A Sod State (2021–22) examines The Troubles in Northern Ireland through rapid cuts between news footage, interviews, newspaper clippings, songs, and a pig-masked puppet. Ryan is preparing a solo exhibition titled Against the Day at the Edith-Russ-Haus in Oldenburg, Germany, developing work questioning contemporary meanings of anarchy. This builds on his 2023 performance Circle A, where performers improvised stomping around a large anarchy symbol, and a new video work of the same name juxtaposes a Spanish fire festival with audio from theorist Murray Bookchin. Ryan earned an MFA from Goldsmiths in 2012 and received a 2023 media art grant from the Foundation of Lower Saxony. He lives between Amsterdam and Brussels. Mire Lee, who selected him, is an artist known for kinetic sculptures, based between Seoul and Amsterdam.