Loading
This exhibition features artist Nickie Hayden's work, which includes interactive haiku wheels where visitors can submit new haiku.
Does this fit your work? 5 questions score every call to your medium, location and budget. Free.
Get matched →Leopold Bloom, in Ulysses, embodies a quiet form of humanity: gentle, receptive, and willing to hold space for others even when the world around him grows loud and divisive. Unlike the brash voices that seek to dominate, Bloom’s way is modest—he listens, he observes, and offers small gestures of kindness. It is precisely this quietness that makes him an emblem of peace. In this sense, haiku becomes a fitting vessel for Bloom’s spirit, revealing peace in small details of nature and daily life. Haiku teaches us, as Bloom does, that peace begins in the ordinary—through patience, acceptance, and attentiveness to what surrounds us.
A haiku is a short, three-line poem that originated in Japan. In its traditional form it follows a 5-7-5 syllable structure (five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, five in the third), for a total of 17 syllables. Haiku rarely rhyme. Instead, they capture a fleeting moment, usually connected to nature or the seasons, and evoke feeling through showing rather than telling. Western haiku often keep the 5-7-5 pattern but also adapt the form, sometimes focusing more on the spirit of brevity and vividness than on strict syllable counts. What remains central is the ability to pause, to notice, and to honour the quiet beauty of the present moment.
The vision of peace takes form not only in words but in motion through two turning cylinders. The first lies horizontally, already holding haiku from a previous exhibition inspired by Ulysses. Fixed to its surface, these poems turn like a rolling scroll, offering fragments of Bloom’s spirit to whoever looks. The second stands vertically, also turning, and has a letterbox in its side. On Culture Night, new haiku are written and then posted into this letterbox. Each poem enters the wheel like a wish, carried within as the cylinder turns. These “turning haiku” remain in motion until the next Culture Night, when they are gathered from the vertical wheel and fixed to the horizontal one. Thus, each poem journeys from wish to word to permanence. Together, the two wheels embody the lesson of haiku and of Bloom: peace is not a sudden declaration, but a process of offering, turning, waiting, and transformation. One wheel holds the past; the other gathers the present; between them, a cycle of words continues, weaving peace across time.
Every listing links to the organizer's official page. Always confirm deadlines, fees, and entry rules there before you apply.
Nickie Hayden has been a practicing artist for over 30 years. She was a director in the Black Church Print Studio and Graphic Print Studio Dublin. She was also on the steering committee of two major exhibitions, ‘Revelations’ in the National Gallery, and ‘Artist Proof’ in the Chester Beatty Library. Her work is in many collections such as, OPW, National Gallery of Ireland, and many more. Hayden’s materials are intrinsic to her practice. She works in oil and acrylic painting, sculpture, mixed media and installation. Some of her work has been highly interactive, involving the general public and various international and Irish poets with her work.
James Joyce House, 35 N Great George's St, Rotunda, Basement, Co. Dublin, D01 WK44, Ireland