Rita Duffy: Portrait of an Artist

Visual artist Rita Duffy talks about how she has reflected NI society and politics in her work over the last four decades and why her latest project explores the Covid pandemic.

Overview

Rita Duffy’s new work, Anatomy of Hope, looks at the current Covid-19 pandemic. Throughout, Rita has avoided some of the self-regarding tendencies of the art world and tried to engage with her audience in as direct a way as possible, often by going out into communities and involving ordinary people in her projects. This documentary tells the story of her life and work through an interview with the artist herself, as well as archive of her at work dating back to the mid-1980s. It traces a timeline from Rita’s childhood in Belfast to the present day by reviewing key pieces of her output, which include early works such as her Siege paintings, which depict a divided society, to her Drawing the Blinds portraits at the Divis Flats in Belfast, and her proposal to tow an iceberg to Belfast to explore the legacy of the Troubles.