'Shelter Bread & Freedom' Remote Readings

The artwork focuses on the structure of the shelter in the People’s Garden, in Dublin’s Phoenix Park and incorporates several components: a series of banners, scaled to the shelter’s interior, sewn by Aoife McLaughlin and dyed by Clíona McLoughlin; a pamphlet with texts by Donna Rose, Grace O’Boyle and Sarah Pierce; and a multi-lingual reading group that took place in the shelter on 10 October, 2021.

A community of readers who have migrated to Dublin presented short, chosen texts read aloud in their home languages, including: Arabic, Bohjpuri, Creole, Danish, Greek, Hindi, Kinyarwanda, Norwegian, Polish, Slovene, Spanish, Swiss German, Telugu, Vietnamese. The texts included personal letters, diaries, books, manifestoes, poems, lyrics, and other matter. The readings were not translated and the audience was invited to gather and listen, without (necessarily) understanding the languages spoken every day, by people who live in Dublin.

Readers included: Anh Ngo, Anistah Jugnarain, Devi Chakouree, Embla Müller, Jaime Luján Alarcón, Laura Twagirayezu, Maria Maarbjerg, Nishta Sarathee, Simone Stolz, Stavi Mitsu, Tuqa Al-Sarraj, Visnou Chakouree, Žiga Kelenc, Zuzanna Przybyla. Special thanks to Nasser Aidara.