Memory is not a stored thing, consulted and returned intact. To recall is to reopen a memory and lay it down again, changed. Every, consolidation is in fact reconsolidation. The memories we return to most often are what we have rewritten the most; the ones we love best are the least reliable. What we hold on to, we alter by holding.
The five artists in this exhibition work from things that happened: to them, to their families, to their countries, and to strangers whose names they will never learn. They work from what is held outside the body, in the archive, the file and the server, where memory appears permanent but is not. Across photography, painting, sculpture and scent, the exhibition offers not a single account of the past but five incompatible ones.
What each make is a second object; assembled from feeling, repetition, distortion and longing. A new truth in place of one that’s gone.
Exhibiting artists: Rayan Aljneibi, Layla Doueidi, Sara Kamar, Martin Ong Yambao, Husna Samer