artomatic 2024: "Memory"

i’ve rediscovered my love for artomatic. it had gone away for a while, especially while serving on the board and attending meeting after meeting about process when we all knew that as soon as we secure a site all the planning flies out the window. part of the reason i felt anxious about even participating this time. but that’s over. i got the angry out at the condescending jerks who treated me poorly in the past, and then i got to work. lots and lots of work over the past two weeks. help from satch, marxe, aixa, arlene, and carey pushed me through. now i get to enjoy.

so yeah, i’m really pleased with the results! the installation is called “Memory” and it’s dedicated to Barry.

we open on friday, 8 march, at 2100 M Street, NW, washington dc. to get to my installation, in room 5056, get off the elevator on the fifith floor, walk through the glass doors, take a right, pass the washington glass school space and continue toward the hall. my room is very hard to miss — on the right. lots of multi colored fabric.

process pix:

and a video i took sunday night after finishing installation:

here’s the text for the artist’s statement, hung at the entrance.

Memory 

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?            

If you do go, let me know what you think!