Key Cards

Installed on the site where the Tivoli Theatre was torn down to make way for a Staycity Aparthotel complex, Keycards is a sculptural installation that locks in the cultural deformations taking place throughout Ireland’s capital city.

Hanging from a steel ring, a collection of plastic keys are suspended in midair. Each key is an outline of individual keys taken from evicted homes throughout Dublin, and remade on hotel room keycards. The copied keys become a hybrid between the two worlds of accommodation in Dublin, with temporary, luxury spaces squeezing out both tenants and local communities. This reshaping of Dublin is mirrored on the reshaped, skeletal keys that now hang dormant, bunched together as a key trade-off.

Included within these keys are those taken from past homes of a building on Moss and Gloucester Street that was to be re-developed by Cooperative Housing Ireland, but instead was sold off by Dublin City Council and re-developed into a Staycity hotel, retail and office complex. The metal keys that once opened doors to homes, now exist on the plastic that open hotel rooms.