“...our understanding of who we are and who we will become depends on memories that may fade, change, or even strengthen as time inexorably passes. And it is from this ongoing dynamic between time and memory that our autobiographies—the stories we tell about our lives—are born. We cannot hope to understand memory’s fragile power without examining what happens to memory as time passes and considering how we translate the residues of experience that persist across time into tales of who we are” (Schacter,1996:136).
The core of my practice is informed by memory, specifically the relationship between memory and time. It is a reflection of what is absent and present, and what traces memory leaves behind. Following the passing of my grandmother in 2021, I have been trying to hold onto the memory of her whilst grappling with feelings of loss and absence. This longing to remember developed into an attempt at trying to recall memories from my gran’s house that she lived in from 1974-2010. Through my work, this has been done by constructing, recording, and tracing my memory of her house in a state of it slowly shifting, distorting, and deteriorating from my memory. I wanted to articulate the feelings of trying to grasp at a memory just out of reach. It is an attempted repair of my memory and experience, as well as an attempt at solidifying memory as a form of holding onto it. It is an exploration of memory, not only in its presence, but also in its absence, and what is left behind.
A room I remember clearly from my grandmother’s house was her office. I remember a narrow corridor leading to a dimly lit, carpeted room with a brown chest of drawers and thin transparent curtains. I recall sitting on the floor looking through the bottom drawer at all the games stored inside. What I discovered after recalling this memory is that what I remembered as a chest of drawers was actually a kist. It was kept, not in the office as I had imagined, but rather the living room.
My grandmothers kist is present in my body of work, however it has been transformed. It is now present In the form of a chest of drawers.The chest of drawers is how I originally remembered it. The drawers are made of cement, rendering them functionless due to their weight and lack of handles. The object, now immobilised by concrete, draws more attention to the absence of its former use. One does, however, have access to the last drawer, which is open and filled with gooseberry seeds made from teabags. The gooseberries act as a metaphor for memories that are obstructed or cluttered, like a gooseberry encased by its husk, preventing one from viewing it clearly. They are made from teabags to reference my memory of having tea with my grandmother.
