Asylum Archive _2007–2022

Artist Vukašin Nedeljković has documented Ireland’s system of direct provision centres in images. The resulting photographic archive provides a visual record lacking for Ireland’s earlier carceral institutions.

In 1999, the same year that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern gave a state apology to survivors of abuse in Ireland's industrial schools,  the Irish government introduced direct provision through the Immigration Act.

Housed in ill-equipped and overcrowded accommodation, run for profit by private companies as part of the direct provision system, those seeking asylum in Ireland in the twenty-first century have not been shown the security or protection associated with the word 'asylum'.

Human rights groups and parliamentary reports have long pointed out that direct provision is a system unfit for purpose.

Despite multiple government pledges to abolish direct provision, Ireland's confinement of migrants still resembles the carceral network familiar from the twentieth century.

Immigration Act, 1999

When Vukašin Nedeljković arrived in Ireland in 2007, they began to photograph direct provision centres across Ireland. These images constitute the most extensive visual record of Ireland's ongoing system of coercive confinement.

Images courtesy of Vukašin Nedeljković. See https://www.asylumarchive.com/.

In this interview, Vukašin Nedeljković discusses the origins of Asylum Archive.

I think that we know, already, what is happening, and I think that we are refusing, deliberately, to deal with the problem.

Vukašin Nedeljković

The Asylum Workshop 2023

Playwright Colin Murphy was commissioned to write a play about Ireland’s largest psychiatric institution, St Brendan’s Hospital, Grangegorman. It was then staged on the grounds where the asylum once stood.

Screening Coercive Confinement

Ireland's Institutions in Word and Image

Asylum Archive 2007–2022

When Vukašin Nedeljković arrived in Ireland in 2007, they began to photograph direct provision centres across Ireland. These images constitute the most extensive visual record of Ireland's ongoing system of coercive confinement.

The Asylum Workshop 2023

Screening Coercive Confinement

Asylum Archive _2007–2022