Artist Statement

Sometimes I wish I could create more time. 

Discarded and Retrieved is a collection of memories and reflections around the feeling of being left behind in time. This is a collection on the heartbreak of growing older and becoming aware of it. A bittersweet understanding of the past. 

This series explores the life cycles of being and reflecting. The sudden realization that we have gotten so much older without even realizing. The dissonance of finding out that you are no longer the person you used to think you were. These are the feelings of time sneaking up on you. 

As I near the end of my college years, I think about how years from now my memory of these years will just be a blurry image of the past. How I can sum up every stage of my life in just a couple sentences. How the overwhelming emotions I have felt in these moments will all be diluted to a vague feeling of nostalgia as the years pass. I wish I could remember it all, but that’s impossible.

How many memories, thoughts, and feelings have we discarded throughout the years? Is there a way to retrieve them? Without our memories who are we?

My parents were once not parents. We were once not adults. Through this show, I mourn and celebrate the time passed. This show brings focus onto the different stages we have lived and the ways we have moved from them, becoming aware of our place in time right as we are about to leave it.

In the grand scheme of things, maybe nothing really matters. Years from now, maybe no one will remember. But as we are now, feeling time pass, we can’t help but lose ourselves in these moments. We can slow down, look up at the stars, feel existential dread. 

But at the end of the day, isn’t it special that we can feel all this in a shared timeline?

Timeline
September 2021 - March 2022

Medium
Edited mounted on foamboard
Graphite hand-written poems
Graphite illustrations
Colored pencil illustrations
Felt cutouts

Project Advisors
Leigh Tarentino
Ed Osborn

Exhibition Details
March 4, 2022 - March 10, 2021
LIST Art Building (64 College St, Providence)

Full Thesis Paper
Exhibition Presentation Slides