Before we had language, as newborns or even in the womb, we absorbed our experiences. These covert memories, illusive fragments in our subconscious, shape how we see and interpret the world around us.
Traumatic memories are also fragmented, hidden, locked in our bodies. That fragmentation is how we survived the horror of trauma. And even ordinary memories are unreliable, shifting, subject to changing interpretations.
Out of random experiences we create narrative, a way of making sense of ourselves and our place in the world, but we are filtering those experiences through old cognitive lenses.
Humans see patterns in fragments. But what really happened?
(This piece started with a pattern of colored tape laid over watercolor paper. I took pictures of the result. I then created another pattern using markers, over the taped paper. I photographed the result, then removed the tape and photographed again. I printed the photos with pigment-based ink on acid-free paper. I then cut and combined the photos to create the finished piece of fragmented patterns, fragmented memories.)