Grade: 12
Materials: Graphite and Charcoal Pencil
Dimensions: 30cm x 22cm
Artist Statement: My exhibition’s objective is to portray the power of memory. I wanted to create an exhibition with significant personal meaning to me and I was highly interested in ideas surrounding memory and truth. I explored how memory is often shaped by childhood experiences and our external environments while highlighting the saying, “Where one lives, affects how one lives” as I find it relevant to my upbringing and how I perceive my memories in the present. Within my work, I focused on the use of symbolism of cigarettes and light to portray my message of memory. While the overarching theme of my exhibition focuses on memory, each piece explores a different interpretation of my memories with my family and late grandparents through different familial perspectives. I wanted each piece to reference the senses of nostalgia I collect from memory whether it be through the smell of cigarette smoke, or the visuals of the illusion of light, while still leaving room for interpretation from the audience throughout my entire exhibition. I explored how my understanding of what I have been exposed to throughout my childhood has developed as I got older. For example, my family’s smoking habits that I have witnessed since I was a child. When I was younger, I simply accepted the presence of smoking without understanding the dangers and addiction that have been infiltrated into my family. I find that childhood memories often cover the truth as such memories have been developed through childhood innocence. Such innocence fails to expose us to the truth, and so my exhibition explores how understanding the depth of our upbringings is often startling as we lose an element of innocence.
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