Bord Failte, Ireland’s tourism agency, works hard to project a romantic image to potential visitors. It’s been so successful that tourism has surpassed agriculture as the country’s leading industry. The comforts of Guinness stout, the bouncy charm of the folk music, and the hundred shades of green that make up the unspoiled landscape combine to form an imaginary place that shares very little with the everyday experience of the contemporary Irish.
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But rather than dismissing these images as phony, Northern Ireland native Willie Doherty says, “There isn’t an authentic Ireland. Those ideals are just as legitimate as the ones I grew up with living in Derry.” True Nature, Doherty’s video installation at the Renaissance Society, explores American perceptions of Ireland, which he says are informed as much by family storytelling traditions and the movies as by the tourism industry.
True Nature addresses a phenomenon that used to perplex Doherty. About ten years ago, when he started exhibiting his work in this country, he noticed that Irish-Americans tended to show unmitigated enthusiasm for what were largely bleak, ominous images of their ancestral home. Doherty found that being Irish gave him an “inherent authenticity” in their eyes, a talisman that made them “suspend their critical faculties.”
True Nature is on exhibit at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Cobb Hall, 5811 S. Ellis (773-702-8670), through April 18. Admission is free.
