this is an altar for remembering, ancestral or otherwise
2021 - ongoing
this installation is an evolving collection of created and found objects exploring both the depth and shallowness of heritage and ancestral connection in diasporic conditions.
material memory is the throughline in the work - both in exploring how material culture and objects allow us to foster a connection to the past and our heritage and in the material itself. the felted cushions hold childhood memories but also the visible memory of the needle felting the wool to the cloth. the painted ćilim (carpet) is a facimile of sorts - paint imitating the patterns traditionally created through weaving, an echo of a quickly fading craft whose patterns have been coopted by both nationalistic projects and those trying to find connection to their past.
the found objects - crochet peices gifted by my baba, rakija bottles, my deda’s playing cards - hold a different kind of memory, something deeper and more immediate, grounding the work in “real” memory as well as the constructed.
