A Dublin-based artist has collaborated with an inner city women’s interfaith group on a community arts project to celebrate the diverse history of the capital.
Over the past year, artist Laragh Pittman has been working with the International Women’s Group at the Lantern Inter Faith and Intercultural Centre on Synge Street in Dublin 8 through an ‘Artist in the Community’ project.
Their project, titled Travels Into Several Remote Corners of Dublin, was inspired by the subtitle of Jonathan Swift’s famous novel Gulliver’s Travels.
Working with a diverse group of migrant and Irish women, Laragh found they had a shared interest to better understand the city they all live in.
Visits from the Lantern Centre to St Patrick’s Cathedral, Marsh’s Library, the Jewish Museum, the Little Museum of Dublin, the Iveagh Gardens and Henrietta Street revealed the many different cultural and historic layers of Dublin through the years.
Participants collected and recorded patterns and traces of decoration and colour in floor tiles, metalwork and architecture, noticing the imprint of migrations and cultural imports and the eclectic styles of craftwork, including those used during the British colonial period.
Pittman said: “I was struck by the fact that we all live in a multi-layered world and that knowledge and evidence of previous or alternative cultures was always there, it just has to be found again.”
In a series of art workshops, the women spoke of how they had come to know the city in their first days as migrants or in their childhoods in Dublin.
Through making log books and drawing patterns from their journeys around Dublin or from other countries, they created an imaginary map based on the street layout in the south inner city, using a colourful and exciting mixture of patterns and street names transposed into some of their original languages.
This map was displayed with their preparatory work as the ‘Museum of the Re-Found’ at the Bayno in Liberties College.
At a reception to mark the end of the project, Katherine Atkinson of arts development agency Create said: “The Arts Council and Create have a commitment to enhancing cultural diversity in the arts. That cultural interaction enriches the arts in Ireland, offering opportunities for mutual sharing and learning.
“The Museum of the Re-Found, with artist Laragh Pittman, is an example of that cultural enrichment as the International Women’s Group from the Lantern Centre made art work together for the museum.”
Funding came from Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts in social and community contexts.
