Under the theme ‘Bite the hand that feeds you’, the PhotoIreland Festival 2021 will take place from 1 to 31 July with exhibitions in Dublin, Ireland. As it was in 2020, the festival will also organize a programme with online activities, including talks and a critical online cooking channel.
There is power in how we feed ourselves, with food being the cornerstone of cultures, ideologies, and principles. Eating or not eating can be an act of protest, feeding or not feeding — an act of control; food brings people together and pushes them apart. Through the presentation of current work and commissions, this year PhotoIreland Festival brings to local and international audiences selected artists exploring this contentious, yet every day, topic.
Taking its cue from current conflicts and affairs, the festival generates a discussion around complex social and global issues, with topics ranging from hospitality to colonisation, from hunger to overconsumption, trauma to technology, ethics to ideologies, to sustainability, and even surveillance capitalism. The programme does not claim an all-encompassing representation of food related issues, but is intended as a way to invoke specific questions, ideas, and research; it brings forth questions and considerations towards a conscious and informed consumption. We invite the audience to take a seat at our table and join the conversation on the politics and poetics of food.
The festival brings together traditional and contemporary lens-based works, alongside film and performance, serving a cornucopia of engaging and relevant material — with many works never before shown in Ireland — through exhibitions, talks, and a critical online cooking channel!
