memory

site specific installation (artomatic)  .   fabric, wood, fishing line, plastic lattice, LEDs, acrylic paint, upcycled mirrors, and other found items   .   (2024)

I began collecting accounts of people’s earliest memories before the pandemic, with the idea of exploring how memory informs our sense of identity. 

What happens if we lose our memories through disease or in the course of natural aging? Does our identity change, within ourselves or in the eyes of our family and close friends? As I’ve learned about the unreliability of memory and how it changes upon each recall(either based in shared reality or by drawing conclusions from our own reality), I wonder what an all-objective video would show of those memories, and if we could accept the ‘truth’ of that reality as opposed to the one we have designed over time? If a person we share a memory with is no longer with us, how can we be sure we remember it correctly, truthfully? Are our routinely-embellished, established memories still truth? 

Fragments of memory tear and tie together, much like strips of brightly colored fabric. This installation is my attempt at exploring these questions. Maybe you think about this as well?   

<<— this video was taken two weeks into artomatic — lots of people have left memories!