FMP – Research – What do memories look like? Visualising memories

Since starting my research for this project, I have been struggling with the idea of what does a memory look like? It seemed so impossible for me to visualise. My research into artists who use memory in their work, but also specifically artists who make memory physical. However I used instagram and saved and screenshotted posts which work reminded me of memories. I then used them to create a moodboard for me to refer to when visualising my own memories.

This artist had many inspirational pieces which related to how I personally visualise memories. This one which is a collage piece related to me because it made me think about how memories are not one clear photograph or video, which I knew before, but using collage as a technique I believe would work really well to show this idea of sticking everything together. Especially as much research and personal experience with traumatic memories show that it can all become very fragmented and you many focus on little things.

I had already decided that I thought mark-making would be a good technique especially when trying to visually describe feelings, emotions, touch and smell. This was a good example I found of that.

The four images above are all in a similar style, and some with similar techniques. The first two were about the impermanence of shadows, which made me think of the metaphor of comparing memories and shadows. And all of them together made me think about how again memories are not photographic, and the etches can be blurred, information missing and how I could incorporate that into my visualisation of my memories. But also made we really wish I had ink with me so I could experiment with ink on wet paper and see how it bleeds and moves when creating more abstract interpretations of memories.

The two images above by Brno Del Zou made me think about how we remember faces as they are three dimensional objects and how a photograph is 2 dimensional and we can remember it on many different planes, but also again this idea of fragmentation and how we focus on different things, and maybe this composition could work very well for my imagery even when it will not be faces.

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