I frequently find myself caught up in memories of the past; they interfere with my experience of the present despite their fragmentary, incomplete nature. The passage of time inherently corrupts memory; it obscures some details and eliminates others, usually abstracting them beyond concrete reality. Despite this unreality—and sometimes because of it—the past exists prominently in the mind, often becoming a fixation that obscures the present itself.

This project is a visual exploration of memory. Using oil paintings and cardboard cutouts, I hope to convey my overlapping, fragmentary experience of memory over time. The painted spaces previously illustrated my present—they are all taken from the space that I was living when I painted them, with which I was deeply familiar and comfortable. The cutouts, conversely, are spaces that I was once familiar with but now can only access in photographs or memories, removed by time and distance. By overlapping each individual piece, I am attempting to illustrate the function of this time and distance on my own memories. Though the present is clearest in the mind, it is very often obscured by blurred, fragmentary moments from the past—complete separation is not possible. As my space became disrupted by relocation due to COVID-19, though, the “present” represented in this piece was abruptly shattered. By partially displaying the final project in the windows of my current home, I am attempting to incorporate a third level of “memory” in addition to the two that I had initially planned.

The materiality of cardboard is also essential to this project’s message. It can be treated as a complete, flat surface, partially ripped away, or completely cut through, much like memory can be faded and corrupted by time. The cutouts stand in for distant memories because of this “corrupted” quality—though they depict real spaces just as the paintings do, they are comparatively flimsy, fragmented, and diminished from their original form. Though the oil paintings appear more “complete,” they are also made of cardboard, and thus have equal potential to be torn up and abstracted. In fact, transporting this piece from one space to another has already demonstrated this change; I had to cut one large painting into four smaller ones in order to take it with me. Even left untouched, the oil paint will eventually corrode and destroy its cardboard base over the course of years, making this project as ephemeral as the memories it represents.