05 / 09
The Past Remains, Yesterday Fades
Through this work, I consider how experiences remain embedded in our sense of self while the people within them fade.
When talking with my grandfather, I noticed that he remembers his youth vividly while forgetting things that happened yesterday. Before my summer program in New York, he recounted his business trips there, describing places and people he encountered. Yet he sometimes cannot remember whether he closed the windows or where we went on our last family trip.
Making
I altered a found hard drive and embroidered an old group photograph of him and his colleagues outside their factory onto canvas. I left every figure except my grandfather unstitched, exposing the white canvas to suggest people gradually disappearing from memory.
The hard drive’s storage function contrasts with the selective remembering represented by the embroidery.
Documentation
No image or video received for this work yet.
The question
Rather than a warehouse preserving everything, memory may be more like a photo album we continually revisit and reinterpret. Through this work, I consider how experiences remain embedded in our sense of self while the people within them fade.