2019
Personal Project
Design, Photography, Installation
Last year I was sitting on the guest room floor with my mother as we emptied out the many photo albums she had stored in a bin under the bed. As I turned page after page and saw myself, still a newborn baby, in people’s arms, on the couch, or sleeping, I began to forget that the baby was actually me. This separation of past self and present self questioned my trust in what I was seeing. How do I know that that child is really me? I’m a completely different person now, physically and figuratively, than I was when I was merely months old. How is it possible that baby in the photograph is the same person looking at the photograph?
The idea of a prescribed memory came to mind: a memory we can’t remember living through, but have proof it existed. A memory we’re told to believe because we can’t recall what happened years and years ago. It’s a narrative we are told about ourselves or a way for us to trust what we can’t remember.
Within an installation set up to mimic the area of Brazil I grew up in, the viewer is forced into a narrative that is not theirs. The memories across the wall are distorted to show the passing of time and the inherent nature of memory changing from fact to fiction. Things aren’t always how we remember them.
“The Prescribed Memory or How I Learned to Trust What I Don’t Remember” is a book that goes into detail about the idea of narratives we’re told to believe, and narratives we make for ourselves as we grow older. The text was written with my personal accounts dealing with prescribed memories and how I’m turning them into my own accounts of what I remember.
Visit the gallery page for a look at what was inside the artist book.
The book design consists of a strong gradient that includes some colors I would use to describe my memories of my time living in Brazil. Vibrant blues and oranges remind me of the painterly sunsets we would get every evening. A distorted wave pattern washes up throughout various places within the installation and book, which visually represents the warping of memories and narratives. The pattern is also a nod to Copacabana sidewalks—an iconic pattern found through Brazil’s coastal cities.
While the viewer is interacting with the book which sits upon a warped pedestal, they are completely surrounded by leafy plants, sand, and red rocks. All of these are common in the specific area of Brazil that my family is from. The transformative environment references respected Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica, who brought outside landscapes into indoor settings.