This thematic group exhibition explores the role that memory plays in the construction of a person’s sense of self, and how identity, like remembrance, is something that is shaped by experience, history, knowledge of our bodies, and other factors and contingencies. Eschewing supernatural notions of a fixed and eternal soul, A Body of Memory (from neurons to the sea) takes inspiration from a psychological “turn” away from metaphysics and religion, and towards the idea that recalling who we were helps to shape and inform who we are, and what we shall become. Through the work of nine international artists, A Body of Memory (from neurons to the sea) traces the various ways and means through which recollection is not only tied to cognition, but how the plastic, malleable, and mutable nature of memory affects our ties to ourselves and other individuals, both human and non-human.
This change in the perception of the self – from something cosmic, intangible, and set, to something more social, embodied, and fluid – opens unique ways of thinking about our shared existence in specific, and memory formation in general. For example, how do the inherited stories and life experiences of our forefathers, foremothers, and other forebears inform not only how we think about ourselves, but how we feel as well? Furthermore, how do our learned senses – of taste, and touch, but also of pain and thirst, for example – read the world, and how do these processes and organs construct people’s worldviews and specific emotions at the same time?
