“...yet my real childhood had disappeared. I have lied about it so often that I no longer have a real memory of this time, and my childhood has become for me some kind of universal childhood, not a real one.””
Two interrelated themes have dominated my artistic practice over the last decade: time and memory. As humans, time is essential for us to gain experience and knowledge. The only kind of knowledge possible is temporal in nature. While there are standardized methods of measuring time, the way individuals perceive it is anything but consistent. Time is fickle, surging forward, dragging us in tow, then suddenly decelerating to creep ahead tentatively. Memory is time’s sister, and can be equally capricious. Our complex relationship to time and memory is characterized often by pleasure but also by feelings of frustration and fear or pain. Life and living is bittersweet. We fear the passage of time due to both the unknown future and the inevitable end. Time often reveals fragility and weakness of physical objects, especially our own bodies, as well as memories, ideas. Memories fade with time, get rearranged, reassembled, recreated, and sometimes created entirely from our dreams or imaginations. With time’s passage, strange things become familiar, and the familiar gains a sense of strangeness. I am especially intrigued with the way culture influences perception of time and memory, particularly memories of childhood.