Exhibition

Client: Akademie der Künste, Berlin

Dates: March - April 2022

Category: Drawing and Exhibition

Photos: Peter Oliver Wolff and plattenbaustudio

This installation presents a physical, spatial reading of abusive power structures on the daily lives of those affected. In particular, it looks at the case of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, where vulnerable women and girls deemed to have broken the strict moral codes of Irish Catholic society (often with regard to sex and expected female conduct) were held indefinitely and forced to work without payment at laundry or needlework as penance for their sins. The last laundry - located at Sean McDermott St in Dublin’s city centre - closed in 1996 and remains empty today. It is the subject of ongoing debate about how we might best commemorate places of dark history.

Three objects made of paper form an axial composition; the installation includes an industrial ironing machine and a detail from a chapel wall, with a single bed placed between them. Together these objects replicate their original positions within the dormitories, laundry and chapel at Sean McDermott St. They spatialise the reality of lives caught within the powerful forces of a religious culture which saw Irish society’s most vulnerable women and girls commodified and their humanity negated.