Creative Ireland; Dublin City Council Diversity Art Commissions - Winning Artists Announced

Five talented artists have been commissioned to produce new artworks that creatively reflect diverse communities in our city.

The artists are:

Ala Buisir

Jialin Long

Mandy O’Neill

Tessy Ehiguese

Tobi Isaac

The initiative is supported by the Creative Ireland Programme and Dublin City Council and is being curated by Photo Museum Ireland.

“We are delighted to partner with Creative Ireland and Dublin City Council in the development of this important art initiative. At their heart, the Diversity Commissions are a celebration of the vital contribution diverse communities make to the life of our city. Speaking as a Dubliner with mixed race heritage, I am especially excited that five such talented artists, each with their own unique experiences of life in Dublin, will be enabled to make new bodies of work. We look forward to showcasing these in the Photo Museum Ireland and throughout the city next Spring” 
Photo Museum Ireland Co-Curator Tanya Kiang  

The commissioned projects will reflect the dramatically changed social and cultural landscape of the capital as we approach the centenary of the foundation of the State. 

A portfolio set of the commissioned works will be produced and held by the new National Photography Collection at the Photo Museum Ireland. This permanent record of contemporary Dublin at a pivotal point in our history will form an important legacy for the future.

Follow the project on:
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About the artist’s

Ala Buisir
Ala Buisir was born in Ireland, her family comes from Libya. She graduated from TU Dublin with a BA in Photography and has recently finished an MA in journalism at DCU. Her work documents the social and political tensions around us today. The main influences on her style are her culture, faith, and history. Her diverse background gives her a different perspective on telling stories.
For the Diversity Commission, she will document the Muslim community that has been in Ireland for longer than 20 years. Using the family portrait genre, the work will show how they have made their life here and will highlight what they have brought to Ireland from elsewhere.

Tessy Ehiguese
Tessy Ehiguese is a Fine Art and Fashion Photographer. She was born in Kaduna, Nigeria and spent most of her life in Dublin. She got into photography in her transition year at St Joseph’s in Lucan, and went on to study Creative Digital Media at TUD. She has continued to pursue photography because of the ability it gives her to express her wild imagination!
For the Diversity Commission, Tessy wants to acknowledge the professional and entrepreneurial contribution that ethnic minority communities have made to Dublin City. She will focus on the Asian and African diaspora working in Dublin City centre.

Tobi Isaac-Irein
Tobi Isaac-Irein was born in Ibadan, Nigeria and came to Dublin when he was six years old.  A photographer and digital artist, he uses a combination of photography and photoshop to tell stories and convey the world around him as he sees it. Tobi has worked in film production and also with many music labels. His artwork has been published in magazine and online media platform Slight Motif.

For the  Diversity Commission, Tobi will draw on his own creative community to focus on the stories that artists, originally from the African Diaspora, experience when growing up in Ireland. The work will explore how this new generation of artists have integrated their traditional upbringing, beliefs and ideas into Irish culture, and how this process has culminated in a hybrid cultural identity that is shaping their creative output and that of the wider community.

Jialin Long
Jialin Long was born in Beijing and came to Ireland to study for a Masters in Electronic Engineering in 2006. After working seven years as an engineer in an Irish firm, Jialin made a swift career change in 2014. She took a PLC photography course at Pearse College and went on to graduate with first-class honours from IADT, winning a Gallery of Photography Ireland Graduate Award in 2020. She also found time to get married and have two children along the way!
For the Diversity Commission, Jialin wants to challenge the stereotyping of the Chinese community in Ireland. In her work, she will focus particularly on how the association of Chinese people with restaurants and takeaways inhibits a more nuanced understanding. Jialin will collaborate actively with those she is photographing, to build a deeper and more expressive series of portraits of this diverse but under-represented ethnic community.

Mandy O’Neill
Mandy O’Neill is a Dublin based photographer working with themes of place, community and institutions. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and received multiple grants and awards. She is currently a PhD candidate at DCU School of Communications where she is researching new photographic methodologies for the representation of place.
For the Diversity Commission, she will be working with a group of 15-18 year-old girls of different nationalities, all based in Dublin city. The work will consider the concept of ‘diversity’ and the everyday experience of these young women in the context of the environment they live in.

About the commission

The five commissions were awarded following a nomination process that the contemporary photography sector in Dublin got behind: Photo Museum Ireland would like to thank Agata Stoinska Director of FUSE/Blow Photo of FUSE and Angel Luis Gonzalez of Director of PhotoIreland for joining us in nominating 15 artists from the wealth of photographic talent at work in Dublin today.
A panel consisting of representatives from Dublin City Arts Office and Photo Museum Ireland and an independent expert conducted one-to-one interviews with the nominated artists, and with great difficulty, narrowed the shortlist down to the winning five proposals.
The commissions will be presented to public audiences through an exhibition/public art installations and/or high quality publication - April-May 2021.

For further information: please contact Tanya Kiang & Trish Lambe, Curators, Photo Museum Ireland - info@photomuseumireland.ie

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