Exhibitions
Irish Photographer
November - December, 2025
Elaine Byrne: Drifting Sovereignty
John David Mooney Foundation proudly presented Drifting Sovereignty, a solo exhibition by Elaine Byrne, represented by Kevin Kavanagh Galleries, from November to early December of 2025. This show, supported by Culture Ireland, was opened by Consul General Brian Cahalane.
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Drifting Sovereignty was a multidisciplinary exhibition that critically engaged with the shifting nature of borders and the performance of power at geopolitical and environmental margins. Through photography, sculpture, video, and performance, the exhibition interrogated how sovereignty is both asserted and destabilized in contested spaces.
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Contemporary borders are often represented as fixed lines on maps, yet such depictions obscure their social, political, and material complexity. Byrne's work shifts focus from the border as line to the borderscape--a dynamic, contested space shaped by governance, infrastructure, and lived experience. In doing so, the exhibition emphasized the constructed and mutable nature of borders, which appear, dissolve, fracture, and overlap in response to both human and environmental forces.
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The work displayed in this show traversed multiple geographies. In the California desert. Byrne photographed prototypes of the U.S.-Mexico border wall--monumental forms that embody both the spectacle and futility of territorial enforcement. In the Canadian High Arctic, she documented landscapes marked by forced Indigenous relocation, revealing how political decisions have reconfigured lives and land. In Svalbard, where Russian-owned land exists within NATO territory, she explored competing territorial claims in the context of climate change and resource extraction.
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A central performance video showed Byrne walking across Arctic Sea ice--a minimal gesture that functioned as a meditation on human presence within a rapidly changing landscape. This act underscored how environmental instability redraw boundaries once presumed stable.
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Byrne's sustained engagement with borders positions them not solely as barriers, but as active agents in the production of identity, belonging, and exclusion. Drifting Sovereignty offered a critical reflection on the entanglement of geopolitical power, mobility, and environmental change, prompting urgent questions about the future of territory and the limits of control in an increasingly unstable world.
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About the Artist
Elaine Byrne is an artist who works multimodally, primarily with video, sculpture and photography. Her research-based practice examines overlooked histories, historical texts and artworks as a platform to mobilize history as it relates to current political and social concerns. Giving prominence to language her methodology often uses the interview as a way to confront difficult legal or civic issues.
Since graduating from M.A.Vis (DIT) in 2010 she has shown internationally in Europe, Mexico and USA. She was awarded the Rubinstein fellowship at the Whitney Independent study program in New York in 2015 and the programs' political agenda consolidated her practice as an artist dealing with urgent contemporary political issues. Since 2017 she has been engaged at looking at the issue of borders, where she has particularly focused on contested spaces in the Arctic. This has led her to be awarded three separate residencies in the arctic and a commission by the Hugh Lane Gallery. She is currently a PhD candidate in Film and Media at Temple University, Philadelphia, receiving the Graduate Funding award in 2019. She defends in Spring 2023
She has had solo shows not only at Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, but also at Limerick City Gallery, Oonagh Young Gallery, UAM(Mexico), Montoro21(Rome), ISCP(NY) and Slought (Philadelphia). Group shows include at the Hugh Lane, Douglas Hyde, Visual Carlow, Rubin Foundation(NY), and most recently in Vienna.
She has won many awards including RHA Curtin O'Donough photography prize as well as the 8th Arte Laguna prize (Venice) and the Combat art prize (Milan). In addition, she was awarded the Arts Council Bursary award in 2022 and the Project Funding award in 2014.
Her work is in public collections such as the Crawford Gallery, The Arts Council Council of Ireland, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Rosenbach Museum and Library (Philadelphia), Office of Public Works, Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, Galway University Hospital, Highlanes Municipal Gallery, PwC (London), Donald and Shelly Rubin Collection (New York), Centre of Fine Art Photography (Colorado).
She is a consulting artist to Creative Capital (New York) and teaches at Sotheby's Institute of Art and Temple University.
June - July
DIFFERENT LANGUAGES • ANCIENT MEMORIES
​Arvedo Arvedi
Italian Artist
From June 18th to July 2nd, 2025, we hosted Arvedo Arvedi, an Italian artist, in our International Currents Gallery.
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Thirty years after assisting John David Mooney on STAR DANCE for the Atlanta Olympics, Arvedo Arvedi returned to Chicago with an exhibition of his recent works.
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Decades after his contributions, he made his return to the city and foundation, which he considers a second home—this time, as a hosted artist.
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In DIFFERENT LANGUAGES • ANCIENT MEMORIES, Arvedo Arvedi unfolded the exhibition across four thematic sections, including a striking series of large-scale canvases representing the four elements (Fire, Air, Water, & Earth), the "Wall of Dancing Warriors" which featured over forty smaller works that come together to create a visually-stunning and cohesive display, and a dedicated space for his Arte da Vestige project: limited-edition pashmina scarves that merge fine art with design and storytelling.
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DIFFERENT LANGUAGES • ANCIENT MEMORIES was more than a return to Arvedo's "artistic home," it was a reconnection: to place, to memory, and to the essential role of art as a shred language in a world that's never been louder—or more disconnected.
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About the Artist:​​
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Of noble Veronese heritage, Count Arvedo Arvedi was raised in the family villa, where he cultivated a deep passion for the arts—fueled by ongoing cultural exchange with esteemed guests and renowned artists from Italy and abroad. In 1993, he developed an interest in American Pop Art and met internationally acclaimed artist John David Mooney in Chicago. This encounter sparked a decade-long collaboration on global art projects, culminating in this exhibition our foundation.
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In 2006, Arvedi relocated to Rome, where he worked alongside artist Massimo Catalani on La Casa dei Pesci, a project dedicated to protecting marine life by opposing the use of trawl nets.
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Arvedo's action-oriented technique, painting with hands, brushes, and pipettes, channels ancestral forms drawn from Hopi cave paintings, the Nazca lines, and Saharan rock engravings. The result is a powerful visual language that transcends borders and time, aiming not to ex-
plain, but to connect.
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In recent years, Arvedi has focused on 'corporate art,' partnering with prestigious brands to merge artistic expression with corporate identity. He currently serves as the corporate artist for Commodore Industries.
His work has been exhibited in major cities including Rome, Milan, New York, Chicago, Cannes, Venice, Matera, and Verona.
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May - June
Her Beasts
Nina Murashkina
Ukrainian Artist
From May 29th to June 1st, 2025, we hosted a show for Ukrainian artist, Nina Murashkina.
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Nina Murashkina is a multidisciplinary Ukrainian artist based in Spain.
Her bold, vivid aesthetic draws from Ukrainian naïve art, Indian and Japanese visual traditions, and ancient mythology.
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Murashkina describes her work as “delicious details from the subconscious and the extreme limits allowed in social relations.”
Her goddess-like heroines embody the dual nature of womanhood: both lustful and innocent, provocative and tender, brutally honest and mysteriously dark.
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“At the heart of my art is storytelling,” she says. “I build personal myths, where characters are interwoven in worlds shaped by Eros and Thanatos. Magical feminism defines my vision — I reinterpret reality through a mythical lens. The central figure is always the woman: a powerful force, a triumphant deity who can ride animals, wise men, or even the world itself.”
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From the Artist:​​
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"In this surreal series, Her Beasts, I channel the mystical energy of feminine symbolism that runs through all my work. The Beasts — a blue tiger, ghostly horses, moon-eyed cats — are not merely imagined creatures. They are living metaphors, surfacing from the depths of my subconscious like dreams on the edge of dissolving.
I work across several mediums: acrylic painting, delicate paper silhouettes, and graphic drawings. These techniques allow me to shift between density and lightness, presence and suggestion — much like the Beasts themselves, who move between the visible and the invisible. The layered textures and contrasts of materials reflect the emotional dualities I explore: vulnerability and strength, instinct and reflection.
Each Beast is both a challenge and a companion — a mirror veiled in mist, revealing the untamed, unspoken parts of the self.
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For the women who inhabit my painted worlds, the Beast becomes a rite of passage. Sometimes she is stilled by its presence, shaken by what it awakens in her. At other times, she rides it with fearless grace, carried through dreamscapes shaped by desire and fear.
The Beast is not something I aim to conquer. It’s a force I move with — wild, intimate, and transformative. In this ecstatic meeting of softness and savagery, a new kind of strength is born — luminous, inner, and wholly her own."
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MARCH - MAY
Lennart Anderson: A Retrospective
American Artist
From March 27th to May 2nd, 2025, we hosted a retrospective from acclaimed American artist Lennart Anderson.
Serving as the first time in our Foundation's history that we hosted an American artist in our International Currents gallery, this monumental show showcased one of the greatest talents of the 20th century, Lennart Anderson.
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Featuring over 30 of his essential works, this show served to honor a master craftsman. The celebration included a premier of a screening of Anderson's 1967 lecture at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture simultaneously in an adjacent gallery.​​
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The closing reception of the exhibition, held on May 1, featured a poetry reading from poet EJ Wade and a talk from critic/philosopher Deborah Fitzgerald. Both speakers shared their thoughts and writings inspired by the Lennart Anderson retrospective.
About the Artist
​​​​​Lennart Anderson (1928-2015) was an acclaimed American figurative painter known for his mastery of tone, color, and composition. This first major survey since his death features 32 works spanning over seven decades, coming from both public and private collections.
Described by the New York Times as a prominent painter who "translated figurative art into a modern idiom," Anderson was deeply influenced by Old and New Masters. Hilton Kramer succinctly wrote that Anderson was a “Degas of our time.”
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