The nation of Irelantis : Ireland as elsewhere

Abstract

Against the backdrop of a heritage turn in the humanities enquiring how we use history in response to the needs of the present day, in a collage series called Irelantis, 1994–1999, Dublin-based artist Sean Hillen reused popular tourist postcards to recount anxieties about emigration linking the post-1949 years with the Celtic Tiger period of the mid- to late 1990s in the Republic of Ireland. This article explores the significance of the ways Hillen narrated the Ireland of Irelantis visually by positioning viewers to see it from without and providing evidence of its mobility. The article correlates these features with intellectuals' and members of the Republic's governments' concerns about national sovereignty and agency. As an example, it looks in-depth at the ways a particular collage visually representing central Dublin restages discourses of modernity and tourism in relation to Irish emigration during the post-1949 years. It then briefly considers how another scene outlines complexities of Irish emigration and immigration during the Celtic Tiger period.