This project strand offers short residency opportunities in partner cities for 30 emerging artists. Each UEO city partner will send two artists on a residency to another partner’s city of a different art form, thereby seeking to enrich their professional practice through inter-disciplinary residencies. Artists are chosen on the basis of having demonstrated an interest in the hosting city’s Arts & Society contemporary European theme. They must also practice a different art form from that of the hosting city’s public event. The project offers the emerging artists the opportunity to travel without the pressure to produce work and ideally to experience UEO’s public events.
Melatu Uche Okorie will travel to Lisbon
Dublin’s other artist, Sally Hayden, will travel to Marseille
Artists’ Statement
The artists’ statement will follow shortly
Artists’ Biography
Melatu-Uche Okorie was born in Enugu, Nigeria and has been living in Ireland for twelve years. She has an Mphil in creative writing from Trinity College, Dublin. Her work has been published in Dublin: Ten Journeys One Destination, Alms on the Highway (New Writing from the Oscar Wilde Centre), LIT Journal, College Green Magazine. Her debut collection, This Hostel Life, was published in May, 2018.
Melatu-Uche is currently working on a novel. “Does writing come to someone? I’ll say, yes, in my case it did. As a young teen, if I was asked to name a hundred things that I would become when I grew up, writing would not have made the list. But, I was a good storyteller. A great one even. I knew that from a young age, and I savoured my ability to come into a story from perspectives that are contrary to the norm. I never equated that to writing or thought that the two went hand in hand. Until my audience was only a new-born baby, then, I turned to writing for a new audience.”
“I write because I’m interested in people. The ways we change depending on external stimuli. I see the world as a big stage and we, humans, as characters in it. Sometimes we play the protagonist, the villain, the in-between, the pretender, the follower, the leader, the submissive, the stand-alone, the weak, the strong. Creating these conflicting characters is what I enjoy most about writing.
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