Dorothy Cross, in partnership with University College Cork (UCC), is delighted to announce her project Kinship, which centres on the return of an Egyptian sarcophagus containing the mummified body of a man, which arrived in Ireland in 1914. It was given to University College Cork where it has been stored for over a century. Cross has worked alongside UCC for nearly three years, to secure the return of the mummy and sarcophagus to the Museum of Egyptology in Cairo.
Kinship is the ritualized journey of the mummy back to Egypt – his place of origin. The carrying of the body home is an act of return, almost an act of nature. It is a journey of respect, heavily symbolic and relevant today when millions of people on the planet are displaced and homeless. Like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier the body represents all of us. Not just the return, Kinship incorporated the ripples of documentation that come from this historic event, taking the form of a feature length documentary, a visual art book and a large audio element. Hymns and ballads to life and death resonated across the project as the sarcophagus journeyed home.
Kinship followed on from Cross’ 2019 work, Heartship, both made in partnership with Mary Hickson and Sounds from A Safe Harbour Festival.
The project is accompanied by a new publication, drawing on new writings from some of the best contemporary writers from around the world, who write on and around the themes of the Kinship project – migration, home, refuge, crisis and the process of return.
The book features writing by: Max Porter, Sonali Deraniyagala, Edmund de Waal, John Fitzgerald with Nadra Mabrouk, President Michael D. Higgins, Rosemary Mahoney, Hisham Matar, Philippe Sands, Ahdaf Soueif and Dorothy Cross.
