Idle Walls is a layered story of displacement and the unseen lines of connection between the Irish horticultural industry and the colonial resource exploitation of the occupied territories of Western Sahara. Custom made active walls will replace the gallery walls to display a series of paintings that were inspired by a “Jaima”, the traditional tent of the nomadic Sahrawi people. These active walls are incomplete, exposed, moveable and evolving. You are invited to manoeuvre these active walls around the spaces, becoming an active curator. My imagined pen pal, Aria, is a Sahrawi teacher who frequently wrote to me updating me on life in the Tindouf refugee camps, Algeria, her home in exile. Aria and I played and studied chess as a means of passing the time, and the recorded moves became a starting point for my paintings. The Sahrawi’s speak of being used as pawns in the West’s sinister game of chess; where chess is a metaphor for war. This work is a conversation on the societal challenges of retaining one’s identity in the face of adversity. My paintings not only suggest a battle between the concept and the process in painting, but also between the artist and the audience.