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FAMILY LINES Project

A collage image of a black person with glasses on the left wearing a button-up shirt looking down at the prism shaped object in their hands. There are beige squiggly lines this person. On the right there is a sculpture and a framed photograph. In the centre there is a tree in the background and a person with blonde hair wearing a grey furry coat.

FAMILY LINES is a multi-platform project by artist Alice Rekab in collaboration with Éireann and I: A community archive for Black migrants in Ireland, and with contributions from Holly Graham, Salma Ahmad Caller, Larry Achiampong, and Cypher Billboard, London. FAMILY LINES  explores experiences of migration and survival within the family unit, and focuses on Black and Mixed-Race life in Ireland across generations.

The project takes place across four platforms from October 2021 until September 2022; 1) Online and In-person Film Screenings; 2) Public Billboards; 3) Workshops around race, place and belonging; and 4) Exhibitions, a solo exhibition by Alice Rekab in Gallery 1 and The Artist’s Eye: Éireann and I in Gallery 2 from 1 July to 25 September 2022.

The project was commissioned by The Douglas Hyde and is supported by The Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon through a Project Award.

Diaspora Screenings

Platforming the voices of Black artists and artists of colour, and representing intergenerational legacies of self-representation in the production of film, writing and visual art, Alice Rekab and The Douglas Hyde have invited a number of artists to present their work and invite other artist’s of influence to screen their work in this online and in-person screening series. The series began in October 2021 and runs until July 2022, for the full list please click here.

Shadi Abdel Salam
The Night of Counting the Years

The Douglas Hyde is delighted to present the tenth and final of the screenings of Art from the African Diaspora as part of Alice Rekab’s multi-platform project FAMILY LINES. Aiming to platform the voices of Black artists and artists of colour and to represent intergenerational legacies of self-representation in the production of film, writing and visual […]

Salma Ahmad Caller
Shell Fables ~ a Curious Cabinet of Beings & Becoming

The Douglas Hyde is delighted to present the ninth of the screenings of Art from the African Diaspora as part of Alice Rekab’s multi-platform project FAMILY LINES: Shell Fables ~ a Curious Cabinet of Beings & Becoming by Salma Ahmad Caller (2022). This seventeen minute film is Salma Ahmad Caller’s first film, a prototype, curating her mixed-race identity […]

Billboards

Alice Rekab has created a series of public billboards to communicate within the environment of daily life in the city. These interventions centre around how Black-Irish experience of place can be shared and elevated through image-making and presentation. With a focus on bringing the artworks to areas where black and African diaspora communities make up significant portion of the audience demographic, creating moments of recognition and seeing oneself in places not usually allocated for that purpose.

Alice Rekab
FAMILY LINES: Billboard Series Cork

As part of the FAMILY LINES PROJECT, The Douglas Hyde is delighted to introduce the first of a Billboard Series displaying artworks by Alice Rekab. From 4 November 2021 for three weeks the artwork Isatu at Rest in Cork (2021) will be presented on ten billboards across nine sites within Cork City. As Alice Rekab states “Isatu at […]

Alice Rekab
FAMILY LINES: Billboard Series Dublin

As part of the FAMILY LINES PROJECT, The Douglas Hyde is delighted to introduce the first of a Billboard Series displaying artworks by Alice Rekab. From 4 November 2021 for three weeks the artwork Isatu Chills (2021) will be presented on sixteen billboards across sixteen sites within Dublin. As Alice Rekab states “Isatu at Rest in Cork (2021) […]

Workshops with Éireann and I

These workshops are an invitation to think through how people with Black heritage form and familiarise themselves with their identities, what our possessions tell us about us, and the creative ways we can preserve them.

Éireann and I
Race, Place and Belonging

You’re invited to join us in examining what makes a family archive. Letters, photographs, diary entries, postcards, trinkets. The objects we inherit often reflect our own history and share the same narratives of movement and displacement as we do. How do the items we hold dear to us connect us to our lineage? What do […]

Éireann and I
Race, place and belonging: food and heritage

In this workshop, facilitated by Éireann and I, we invite you to share and celebrate your cultural food practices. Our food practices can be a ritual, an act of celebration, and a way to document our family histories. Participants will prepare and bring a dish and a corresponding food story. Using various artistic mediums we […]

Exhibitions

The Douglas Hyde is delighted to present a commissioned solo exhibition by artist Alice Rekab. In their work Rekab explores embedded personal and cultural narratives; the stories that we tell and the stories that we are told. This work emerges from their own mixed-race Irish identity, experiences of growing up and the context of present day Ireland. Working across film, sculpture, performance, print and installation, they deftly consider the making of one’s belonging through the prisms of the body, the family and the nation state, exploring associated joy and trauma.

Acknowledging the crucial role artists play in influencing and shaping other artistic practices, ‘The Artist’s Eye’ series asks those exhibiting in Gallery 1 to invite an artist of influence to present work in Gallery 2. In this instalment, Alice Rekab has invited Éireann and I group, an archive of Black life for Black migrants in Ireland. Rekab and Éireann and I have been collaborating over the past two years as part of The Family Lines Project culminating in workshops, public billboards in Dublin and London, and this exhibition in Gallery 2.

Alice Rekab
Family Lines

The Douglas Hyde is delighted to present a commissioned solo exhibition by artist Alice Rekab. In their work Rekab explores embedded personal and cultural narratives; the stories that we tell and the stories that we are told about ourselves. This work emerges from their own mixed-race Irish identity, their family history, experiences of growing up, […]

The Artist’s Eye
Éireann and I

Acknowledging the crucial role artists play in influencing and shaping other artistic practices, ‘The Artist’s Eye’ series asks those exhibiting in Gallery 1 to invite an artist of influence to present work in Gallery 2. In this instalment, Alice Rekab has invited Éireann and I, an archive of Black life for Black migrants in Ireland. […]