DUBLIN.- The Technologies of Peace, a major research programme exploring political transition, democratic fragility, and the aesthetics of peace through exhibitions, artist residencies, symposia, co-commissions, research and publications was launched today (Tuesday 10 March 2026) at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA).

This multi-year programme will begin to unfold at IMMA this year as a flagship exhibition for the European Presidency, with later iterations in the North and the UK. The exhibition, The Technologies of Peace: Art and Transition in Contemporary Europe (1990s – 2026), aims to explore the concept of peace, the tools of peace and how they are deployed through an artistic lens. It will draw parallels between Ireland’s complex political history with those of our European counterparts that have had similar trajectories in transitioning from post-conflict into democratic states of peace and stability. The exhibition which opens at IMMA on 12 September 2026 and runs until 9 May 2027, presents artists from across Europe whose work traces the complex processes through which peace is formed, challenged, and sustained. The exhibition spans themes of identity, reconciliation, civic repair, trauma, memory, and the long aftermaths of conflict, foregrounding peace not as a conclusion but as an ongoing political and cultural process.

Drawing on artistic responses to political transitions in Ireland, Greece, Poland, Romania, Spain, Cyprus, Portugal and beyond, the exhibition asks what the “technologies” of peace might be today. These are not mechanical tools but the structures, aesthetics, and intentions through which societies design and cultivate peaceful life, from legal frameworks and political negotiations, to language, publishing, architecture, and institutional behaviour.

Over the next four years IMMA will bring together exhibitions, research, artist residencies, public programmes, and new commissions to explore how artistic practice contributes to civic repair in societies shaped by dictatorship, civil unrest, and conflict. Rooted in IMMA’s longstanding commitment to research-driven contemporary practice, Technologies of Peace positions art as a vital site for reflection, negotiation, and the imagining of inclusive democratic futures.

To mark the launch, IMMA Director, Annie Fletcher and Dr Glenn Loughran, artist researcher on IMMA’s Dwell Here Residency Programme discussed the role that artistic and cultural practices play in healing societies, fostering reconciliation, and creating space for collective reflection beyond the limits of political and legal systems. At a time when democratic norms across Europe are under renewed strain, their conversation underscored the urgency of cultural engagement as a means to address fragmentation, cultivate dialogue, and articulate shared futures.

This special event also included Recording History: Notes from the Field with Dr Isobel Harbison, art historian and Research Associate at IMMA. Dr Harbison introduced her oral history project interviewing artists and filmmakers who were active in the North of Ireland from 1968, including some audio excerpts and observations from her encounters. Funded by the Shared Island Civic Society Fund, Ecclesiastical Ireland and The Benefact Group through the Movement for Good, and the Heritage Council, in partnership with Ulster Museum and the Public Records of Northern Ireland (PRONI), Dr Harbison’s research with IMMA expands on the museum’s commitment to supporting nuanced understandings of conflict and its cultural and material legacies, and will offer an important resource for future research on the conditions and networks of creative production that yield art in, or despite, conflict. Recording History will further unfold at public events at the Ulster Museum on Friday 10 and Saturday 11 April 2026.

Annie Fletcher, Director of IMMA, said: “Over the next four years IMMA will be forging ambitious new partnerships with researchers, artists and institutions across the world. Technologies of Peace brings together artistic practices that reveal peace as something actively produced through dialogue, through memory, through the infrastructures that hold societies together. As Europe navigates profound political tension, this project asks how cultural institutions can model forms of openness, care, and democratic imagination that feel urgently needed.”