Performance Announcement | Off-Site Visual Arts Programme 2026
- 7 hours ago
- 3 min read
The Dust by Maïa Nunes with Brendan Jenkinson
Commissioned by The Complex
Presented at Kirkos
Location: Kirkos, Little Green St, Smithfield, Dublin 7, D07 K744
Date: 21 March
Time: 8 pm
Doors: 7.30 pm
Tickets: Free, book here
The Dust marks the beginning of The Complex Off-Site visual arts programme for 2026. In addition to Maïa’s performance, the programme includes three further exhibitions presented across Ireland in partnership with collaborating organisations. Further announcements regarding the forthcoming exhibitions will be made in the coming weeks.
Maïa Nunes is an Irish-Trinidadian interdisciplinary artist and sound healer whose work weaves with voice, sound, sculpture, movement, and the land to create immersive and multi-textural worlds in the form of films, audio artworks, installations and live performances.
Brendan Jenkinson is a music producer and musician working in Ireland across a broad range of styles. He started experimenting with sound recording techniques at a young age and today he performs live and in studio and works as a composer for film.
In memory of the sacred monument and home that once stood here,
The stonemasons who built it,
And the stones who remain.
For all those who were buried here and forgotten.
The Dust culminates Maïa’s year-long site-specific research, originally developed for a scheduled exhibition in The Gallery at The Complex, whose former building stood on the historic site of Mary’s Abbey. Following the organisation’s eviction, the project has been adapted to a live performance, staged in the same locality, at Kirkos. The work honours both the layered Cistercian history of Mary’s Abbey and The Complex’s more recent presence on that ground. Maïa’s research led to a focus on stone as a material that carries history beyond the span of human life, bearing the marks of generations past. A central question emerged and persists: how can an artwork respectfully honour loss without aestheticising it?
A dialogue between Maïa and leading archaeologist Edmond O’Donovan brought to light a carved Dundry stone pillar fragment depicting a Monk in Prayer, uncovered during the excavation of Mary’s Abbey just metres from The Complex’s former gallery entrance. Believed to have formed part of a doorway pillar, the fragment became a defining motif in Maïa’s work. Their exchange also revealed that as many as 1,000 individuals may be buried beneath the buildings that now occupy the Mary’s Abbey site. Some were monks from the monastery; others were local residents, and some burials pre-date the monastery itself.
In response, Maïa began stone carving under the guidance of eighth-generation stonemason Killian O’Flaherty at his workshop in Wicklow, recreating the Monk in Prayer motif through the rigorous and repetitive process of carving. This act operates as both material research and memorial gesture, honouring the site’s history and those who once lived there. The resulting works are carved in Wicklow granite from Blessington, a stone used extensively in Dublin’s civic architecture. Its civic and ecclesiastical associations resonate with Mary’s Abbey’s intertwined religious and governmental histories.
The improvised performance at Kirkos will explore loss, deep time, ‘and the power stone holds to retain memory’. Featuring Maïa’s stone carvings, her voice, clarinet, and synth, it will evoke a fertile dark underground, where soil and stone meet, where the dead are buried and seeds are planted.
Special thanks to the stones, to Kirkos, Courtney Deery Heritage Consultancy, to Edmond O’Donovan and Killian O’Flaherty for their generosity and knowledge.
Proudly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council.
