| Description |
As a designer, I am influenced by the appearance and tactility of the materials that surround me. I notice their color, shape, texture, type and decoration. My subconscious records these details and replays them as I design. I have a particular affinity for things with history. For this reason I am drawn to the collection of materials that once belonged to ancestors and family members residing in my grandmother's attic. These items range from fine china and linens to boxes of letters, photographs, toys, and other ephemeral materials. I initially justified my interest in documenting this collection as a way to use my graphic design skills in service to my grandmother, who feels compelled to plan a way to distribute her things to her descendants before her death. However, I am also compelled to record the collection as bones in the skeleton of my own identity. "In the West, the fact of collecting is linked to the construction of identity. Baudrillard points out that it is "a dimension of our lives that is both essential and imaginary, as essential as dreams themselves."1 By handling the material things that surrounded my ancestors when they lived, I hope to divine something of who they were and how much of them is in me. All of the choices they made, minor or major,led to my existence, and perhaps my disposition. In some way these objects retain a memory of all the things that involved them, much like German psychologist Ewald Hering "concluded that every living cell contains the memory of the experience of the entire series of its parent cells and even those of former generations... every moment leaves traces that continue to affect all subsequent physical or mental processes. The past collects in the fibers of the body as it does in the mind and determines the way we walk and dance as well as the way we think." |
