Image: Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin ; Aoife Long Image courtes
Maïa Nunes will present ‘Lake Burst’, a multidisciplinary exhibition exploring the geo-mythology of Irish lakes, at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin from 11 September to 25 October 2026. The exhibition will bring together film, live performance, textile, installation, stone sculpture, music and sound, alongside the launch of Nunes’s debut eight-track vinyl concept album, also titled ‘Lake Burst’.
The project centres on a single body of work made over five years in response to a pair of glacial lakes at Lough Bré, at the top of the Glencree Valley. According to the RHA, the exhibition considers Irish lakes as symbols of death and rebirth, sites of healing and transformation, and portals to the Otherworld. Nunes’s work draws on Irish folklore, her multicultural background and her direct relationship with landscape.
The title refers to a phenomenon in Irish mythology in which a previously non-existent lake comes into being, often while a grave is being dug. Across the exhibition’s different media, Nunes develops the theme of rebirth and presents what the RHA describes as a contemporary vision of an ancient body of Irish water, with local and global resonances.
The album extends the exhibition’s movement between visual art, music and performance. Published by Farpoint Recordings, it follows a journey of descent and transformation from the lakeshore into the depths and back out again. The recording features guitar, double bass, woodwind, drums and Nunes’s vocals, and is described by the gallery as an exploration of deep geological time and ancestral healing. Poet Paula Meehan has written that the album “channels the very voice of water singular, and of waters in chorus, sacred and profane.”
Nunes’s installation will also become a stage for a live performance of the album with a full band at the RHA. The gallery says further information about the performance will follow. The exhibition is programmed by the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts and produced with funds from Wicklow Arts Office, Dublin City Council and the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon, with support from field:arts and Live Collision International Festival.
Nunes is an Irish-Trinidadian interdisciplinary artist whose practice combines voice, cloth, movement, sound and land in audio works, music, sculptural installations, videos and live performances. The RHA describes her approach as a process of “re-membering the self in dialogue with the ancestral past”, using an integrative practice concerned with transformation and healing. The exhibition will be free to visit at Gallagher Gallery, 15 Ely Place, Dublin 2. The RHA’s public hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 11am–5pm; Sunday, noon–5pm; and Wednesday, 11am–7pm.
