900 YEARS OF IRISH RESISTANCE is a mural in Belfast, Ireland that pays tribute to the long legacy of Irish struggle against British occupation and colonialism. It was spearheaded by Danny Devenny, Marty Lyons, and Mickey Doherty — all of whom are frontrunners of the Irish Republican Army-aligned mural movement in Belfast, which they began in the 1981 with the painting of murals honoring prisoners on hunger strike and the IRA's armed struggle.
​
I connected with Danny, Marty, and Mickey on a solo trip to Belfast in the summer of 2024. I was there to learn about Ireland's political mural history and see their work in person. Having just worked on the SUMUD: RESISTANCE UNTIL LIBERATION mural in Oakland, I was especially excited to see their most recent 3,000ft-long Palestine solidarity mural on Belfast's "international wall," the decades-old site of transient murals depicting Irish solidarity with other anti-imperialist struggles. After I showed them my work and we enjoyed vivid conversation over some pints of beer, they invited me to paint a new mural with them in the parking lot for Belfast's Black Cab Tours, where former Irish Republican Army volunteers take international visitors around to the city's political murals to teach them about Irish history and resistance.​
I really enjoyed this project because — just as I did with Filipino history while painting GINTONG KASAYSAYAN in Historic Filipinotown — I got to learn so much about Irish history through painting with these Republican mural legends. They brought to the Black Cab Tour parking lot tons of archival materials — old mural sketches, books, personal photographs, political posters they or their comrades had designed, newspapers — and patiently answered all of my eager questions about them. They told me stories about the people and historical moments we brought to life on the mural, as well as about their decades of experience painting murals as a form of resistance while living under military occupation. I noticed a lot of resonances between their stories of painting while imprisoned or under gunfire from British soldiers and the stories told to me by Palestinian muralists in occupied Jerusalem, whom I am working with as part of I WITNESS SILWAN.
​
I am really grateful to have had this experience and to have helped honor and memorialize the Irish struggle. The contributions I am most proud of are my input into the overall composition of the mural as well as the political posters throughout, which I warped to appear as though they were flying in the air.
FINAL MURAL
The first half of the mural represents the Irish struggle before the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, which led to the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, depicted at the center of the mural. The second half of the mural represents the Irish civil rights movement, the Irish Republican Army, the Troubles, and the Good Friday Agreement, which began a controversial and still ongoing peace process.
MURAL PROCESS
Danny Devenny explaining to me the plan for the mural's composition, which represents 900 years of Irish resistance to colonialism and occupation
A sample of the endless stash of archival materials that Danny, Marty, and Mickey brought as reference; Danny explaining the meaning of them to me, connecting the conditions he experienced during the Troubles in Ireland to those in Palestine
Me painting and tracing the lettering of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic
Marty Lyons painting the Falls Curfew with one hand and smoking a cigarette with another; Marty and Mickey debating the composition
Our work site and one of the other murals commemorating the 1981 hunger strikers in the parking lot
Pints at Madden's, a legendary bar across the street, after a day of painting; Marty also painted the mural here and put a keffiyeh on the violin player
