Imagine a photographic exhibition of people’s lives, with no individuals captured in the images – Asylum Archive opens at The Source Arts Centre
Dublin-based Serbian artist Vukasin Nedeljkovic took a conscious decision to depict only places, objects and structures for his interpretation of the direct provision system. His exhibition Asylum Archive opens at The Source Arts Centre Gallery 05 April. Nedeljkovic knows a thing or two about direct provision, being a former asylum seeker himself. He was a teenager living in Belgrade when Yugoslavia, as it was then, began to tear itself apart in a brutal and bloody civil war.
“I was advised that it was not safe to go back home, so I stayed and sought asylum here,” he says. He stayed in four direct provision centres in Dublin; New Ross, Co Wexford; Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo; and Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon. “I suppose I began recording for what is now the Asylum Archive from the beginning,” he says.
The Asylum Archive is an art, activist and academic platform that examines the notion of Direct Provision Centres; the localities and sites where asylum seekers are being held while in the process of seeking a refugee status. The Asylum Archive platform is the continuation of artist Vukašin Nedeljkovic’s ongoing work highlighting the injustices, confinement and incarceration of asylum seekers in Ireland. It is a significant work, creating a memory link with previous Irish Carceral sites including Magdalene Laundries, Industrial Schools, Mother and Baby Homes and Lunatic Asylums.
10am to 5pm from Tuesday to Friday
