Willie Doherty
Doherty wanted to capture how members of the Irish diaspora in Chicago conceive Ireland, from which most are now several generations removed: what does the notion of patria mean to Ireland and the world at large? And it seems that the Ireland that exists in the foggy memories of the descendants of Irish immigrants is both vastly different from the real Ireland, which Doherty also videotaped, and eerily the same. True Nature also shows that Chicago’s own Irish-American heritage is manifested in dramatic if metaphoric ways.
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Doherty visited Chicago in August and November to gather material for the installation–interviews with Chicagoans of Irish descent and hours of videotape of everyday life here. The installation at first gives an impression of tranquillity: you enter a darkened room to find five floor-to-ceiling video screens set at odd angles and just barely touching one another; you hear the soft whispering of what seems 100 voices, none comprehensible but all reassuring. As your eyes slowly adjust to the darkness, you’re struck by one image that shows the vast power of Chicago’s Irish-American heritage: the underbelly of a jumbo jet as it takes off from O’Hare, the busy airport with an Irish name. The adjacent video takes us to mythic Ireland, the stuff of songs and legend: waves crash against a craggy Irish shore. The jet’s banshee scream prevents us from becoming lost in this scene’s romanticism, however.
Later images of daily life in Chicago are accompanied by a more intimate portrait of the Irish landscape. Between shots from inside the Blue Line train and the taxicab is gentle, quiet footage of a contemporary Irish prayer well, a lush, green place where the Irish faithful pray for cures and leave behind kitschy trinkets by way of thanks–plastic rosaries and crosses, small mass-produced Virgin Mary statues, flowers, even tiny film cases. The Irish prayer well, shot in extreme close-up, seems the “real” Ireland–poor but pious, natural but polluted, modern but steeped in medieval myth and faith. Clearly Doherty took great care in the selection and placement of this footage, for at this point in the installation we also see the “real” Irish-American experience: dangling from the rearview mirror of the taxicab is a plastic Celtic cross.
