Reliving Rebirth Through Memory (The following is my artist's statemen...

Oct 06, 2008 - 19:00 PM PST

In the stir of conventional wisdoms regarding political issues dribbling from news sources, from debate, and from common conversation, amateur forecasts of the future seem grim. People are often quick to become disgruntled about or numb to change, fearing this grim future as a result of such change. We might rely on our memory to pull out happiness, lessons learned, or "better times." Through my work I aim to refute this surrender as not only an impossible retreat location, but as an undesirable alternative to inner reflection and rebirth of motivation.
My works are congruent and linked, most obviously through the repetition of the black rectangle. This rectangle represents a myriad of interpretations as they are relative to the viewers' initial interpretations of rebirth. I see the rectangle as an unknown variable that exists in every memory, reminder of a memory, and daydream recalling that memory. Each time we think back on our memories, not only do we change our current person, but we are changed also through whatever experiences we lived through and learned from between the initial event and that recalling moment. We cannot look back on the same memory, in exactly the same way, twice.
Additionally, many of the works are filled with words. I have kept a diary since I was eleven: a decade of thoughts captured and bound. However, as my aforementioned impossibility regarding memories, doubt now surrounds the legitimacy of my diaries. Did I trust their safety enough to put my honest thoughts into them? Did I have a clear idea of the events I wrote about to begin with? How much of my experiences since these events occurred have changed how I look at my own words now? These questions can now be directed at the viewer. Are the pages and words the artist provided really from her diaries? Photocopies, hand-written copies, forged stories: all of these are possibilities (and depending on the intimacy of the thoughts in the diary, probability) harvesting the doubt.
After all of this inner divulging, the viewer might reflect on the new batch of memories they have created. Perhaps having opened a new air pocket of thought about how we relive what has happened already, the viewer can see how the changes we experience give us the opportunity to expand, yet limit our opportunity to remember as innocently as before. I think as long as we acknowledge this and appreciate it for the benefits, rebirth is possible with each reflection, rather than allowing the reflections to imprison us in bitterness.