In Absentia confronts the limits of representation: memory slips through our attempts to contain it, just as the worn fabric disintegrates into traces and smudges. This process suggests the ways in which memory is both a shelter and a fragmented landscape, shaped by time, loss, and longing. This installation offers a tactile reflection on how we attempt to hold onto what inevitably fades, exploring the delicate intersection between the personal and the universal in the traces we leave behind.
This textile installation engages memory, home, and absence through frottage impressions of dresses and blouses once worn by my grandmother. Each garment, mapped onto fabric with oil crayons, reveals the textures of gathers, pleating, seams, and worn threads—ephemeral imprints that speak to the elusive nature of memory. The act of capturing these pieces recalls both the intimacy and impermanence of home, inviting viewers to encounter a form that is both a presence and an absence.
In the sketches made on newsprint paper, the choice of newsprint paper speaks to the ephemerality of memory. Newsprint, typically discarded after a brief moment in time, holds the impressions like fragile records—fading, temporary, and incomplete. This material underscores the transient quality of memory and the impermanence of what we hold dear.
The repeated images echo the persistent, sometimes fragmented, attempts we make to hold onto the past. By layering these rubbings in repetition, I aim to reveal how memory resurfaces in recurring waves—familiar yet constantly changing, never fully capturing the original. This repetition questions the idea of fixed representation and reflects how our recollections shift, overlap, and ultimately dissolve. In this work, home and memory are portrayed as spaces of both continuity and loss, resisting clear boundaries as they blend and blur over time.