Culture Night Flags: Silvina Sisterna, 'The Blue In Between’

Silvina Sisterna’s Flags, The Blue In Between, convey her experience of migration as the space that exists between places, belonging not as a destination but something that forms slowly through repetition, movement, and everyday encounters with the landscape.

Sisterna writes, ‘my Flags emerged from daily walks along the river on my way to and from my studio, returning to the same stretch and observing how the water shifts through tides, weather, light, and the city's movement. As a migrant woman living in Dublin, this repeated journey has helped me learn about the city. The river feels familiar, yet elusive; it is always moving and never entirely fixed. Rebecca Solnit writes that "the world is blue at its edges and in its depths," suggesting that blue arises from distance rather than being part of the landscape itself. I often think about this while crossing the Liffey. Like Solnit's blue, my experience of migration exists in the space between places. Belonging has not been a destination but something that forms slowly through repetition, movement, and everyday encounters with the landscape.'

For The Blue In Between, Sisterna uses cyanotype printmaking: a photographic process using light, water, and time. The resulting deep blue marks are representative of the space between shores, memory and place, and departure and arrival. Blending this process with mixed media, she allows water and chance to actively shape the work and respond to the river’s rhythms. Once hoisted along Wellington Quay, the Flags will continue to move with the weather and reflect the ever changing river below.

Silvina Sisterna is a Dublin based visual artist. Her practice explores migration, belonging, memory, and relationships between people and place through alternative photographic processes, walking, writing and socially engaged collaborative practice.

Accessibility: This show of work takes place outdoors along Wellington Quay and can be viewed from the street on both sides of the river, the Ha'penny and Grattan Bridge. For further accessibility information please contact Learning + Public Engagement Curator Órla Goodwin orla@templebargallery.com or phone 01-6710073 during office hours.