Artifacts: An Exploration in Memory
Britannia Art Gallery February 2019
Our memories are an integral part of our self-identity. They exist in many forms. They come at the oddest times and through a variety of sources. Memory is malleable, fluid, and can change. It can also be solid and intractable. It can be loud and abrasive or subtle and obtuse: ever-fleeting while we attempt to grab at something we believe we should recall.
Memories are triggered by the people around us, the feel of an object, the sight of a place or person, the sound of chimes, the smell of a countryside, how a person walks, the outreach of a hand, the air on our skin, and on and on.
Some memories are not accessible no matter how hard you try. Brain injuries and medical illness like Vascular Dementia and Alzheimer’s can impact on what we can know and when we can know it as, ultimately, time steals away one’s life. Being a new mom or Chronic Fatigue can cause a level of exhaustion that the a brain, at times, has no energy to encode memory. Schizophrenia or Parkinson’s can cause auditory and visual hallucinations that encode as memory but are not. Executive functioning creates problems with short-term or working memory. Chronic Post Traumatic Stress and PTSD cause some memories to be intrusive and all-encompassing or so walled-off it can’t be accessed. A flashback, whether one has experienced sexual child abuse or war, can throw you into a life-threatening situation that actually happened years back. Nonetheless, the physiological response is current (fast heart rate, sweating, the quickening of one’s breathing or no breathing at all). The body remembers.
Whether long or short, intrusive or fleeting, ever-present or long-gone, memory informs us of who we are.
This exhibition is an incomplete self-portrait.
Memories are triggered by the people around us, the feel of an object, the sight of a place or person, the sound of chimes, the smell of a countryside, how a person walks, the outreach of a hand, the air on our skin, and on and on.
Some memories are not accessible no matter how hard you try. Brain injuries and medical illness like Vascular Dementia and Alzheimer’s can impact on what we can know and when we can know it as, ultimately, time steals away one’s life. Being a new mom or Chronic Fatigue can cause a level of exhaustion that the a brain, at times, has no energy to encode memory. Schizophrenia or Parkinson’s can cause auditory and visual hallucinations that encode as memory but are not. Executive functioning creates problems with short-term or working memory. Chronic Post Traumatic Stress and PTSD cause some memories to be intrusive and all-encompassing or so walled-off it can’t be accessed. A flashback, whether one has experienced sexual child abuse or war, can throw you into a life-threatening situation that actually happened years back. Nonetheless, the physiological response is current (fast heart rate, sweating, the quickening of one’s breathing or no breathing at all). The body remembers.
Whether long or short, intrusive or fleeting, ever-present or long-gone, memory informs us of who we are.
This exhibition is an incomplete self-portrait.
