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Hi everyone Welcome to this new May Experience Today we have the pleasure to be in the solo show from Shannon She's an amazing artist and we're gonna which is about objects that tell a story And after a presentation we're gonna sit in circle share our perspective on the works related to the concept that Shannon is gonna present right now So before we start maybe we can do a short round of presentation so that we go we are on the same page So Amir please Hi I'm Joe I'm really excited to be here this morning Hi I'm Francis and I'm looking forward to a video about that Yeah Hi I'm Mattia and I'm already amazed to be immersed in this work So I'm looking forward Oh hi I'm Donna Nice to meet you all Hi I'm Andrea and I'm looking forward to working with you Hi I'm Michael and I'm looking forward to working with you Hi I'm Mika and I'm making music I'm Paris and I'm really good Thank you so much and thank you as well to Vayntruck Gallery to hosting us And yeah big round of applause for Shannon She's gonna share the journey Thank you Thank you I just wrote some things down just so I remember what I want to say about the work Maybe I can start with a little bit talking about my own practice and how I'm a painter and I do installation But I also think of it in terms of collage and like putting together pieces of things and how things have different meanings when they're together And fragmentation and collage is kind of important to my work because I'm an immigrant and I come from an immigrant background So it's a lot about taking pieces from different places and somehow mashing them up and making them make sense together And especially where my family is from in the Caribbean it's very much about bringing together cultures in a way that were almost never meant to be around each other from different parts of the world And it was basically work camps and somehow we made a culture on top of it that was something beautiful So for me it's also about bringing together pieces of something and then reconfiguring them to make something beautiful on top of something that was never meant to be So that's kind of the strategy of how I start my work And I like to use a lot of shadows and arches and stairs and doors Because for me these are sort of portholes to other worlds and other times So it's very interesting for me to talk about how different histories can play out on the present And maybe also the work is a little bit immersive So maybe also I wanted to get you guys to even walk around in the space as well too So you can see the paintings from the back before I start talking about them as well too If you're interested Do you want to come through Okay Okay It's really beautiful Thank you I'm from Trinidad Where are you from The same part of the world Neighbors Okay Thank you So as I said before my work is a lot about migration and moving from place to place And so I kind of think about the figures in my work as these shapeshifters So sometimes depending on where they're going they're gaining a limb or losing a limb or pulling a piece of environment with them into a new space or gaining a new environment And so the whole point of the work is kind of about the adaptations we make when we move from place to place And how much of yourself you can bring into each place And I think about this in terms of also the long history of mobility So for example my family is from Trinidad which is a former British colony And I grew up in Canada which is also a former British colony So there's somehow a lot of material culture that passes on even in a way that you don't realize So there are some objects that are in the same place but then have different meanings So for me that's always been kind of central to my work And also growing up as an immigrant in Canada of that generation there was always It was always a You can come in It's fine Hi There was always attention to how you behave outside of the home and how you behave where you are And how things are back home Maybe you can sit It's okay It's fine Yeah it's fine It's fine It's fine Yeah And how you behave at home So it's this idea of the performance of moving between spaces was always really important growing up And we're all kind of doing this anyway But somehow because we were from an immigrant background it was really sort of at the forefront And I mean the same thing when all of us you know maybe I don't know how many of you are actually from Berlin But how you found yourself navigating Berlin and the people you met along the way that helped you adapt And how maybe even even things about you shifted as you moved from where you were initially And then also so for me it was growing up in Canada and then moving to London and then seeing this sort of effect of British sort of architecture British ideas all of a sudden became apparent to me I just grew up in it so you don't really see the structures of where you're from But then moving to London I all of a sudden understood I was living in an Anglo sphere in a way And then myself moving to Berlin and Germany realizing okay you know yes my upbringing was very Anglo and my eyes were very Anglo but even how language affected what I saw or even in terms of how capitalism functioned things that I took as sort of inherent when I moved somewhere that had a different history all of a sudden I saw those things differently and how class functioned So it's also about how removing yourself from an environment you can see an environment clearer where you were And so this show sort of started it's called A View from Patience Hill because it's about making home and relationships but across distance And I started to think about this during the pandemic even though I'd always been thinking about it my whole life because I've always had family here family there if you're a diaspora person you've always had this but maybe having citizenship different from the people that you love you were all of a sudden forced apart for an extended period of time And then it really made me reflect on having family or a household across geographies And the idea is that well what is the quality or the measure of a relationship before you take that measurement And I sort of thought about this in terms of I don't know if any of you are interested in quantum physics and the quantum world in terms of the smallest particles in the whole universe that basically when we measure them we're affecting the outcome of where they are So it's this idea that the state that we're in is always kind of in flux until we make a measurement and the universe makes a decision where it is So relationships across distance also kind of have that You're constantly renegotiating the past and sort of thinking about how it used to be You're in a flux in the present and then you're always dreaming of when you'll see each other again So the relationship is always existing in these multiple states So that's where this kind of work this whole sort of series started Yeah so then and also I was thinking about correspondence to across distance I was reading this book about when Mandela was in prison in Robben Island and he and his wife Winnie were writing letters back and forth And a lot of it was oh do you remember when things were like this And then the other one saying oh no I don't really think so And so this idea about how memory is also something that we all make together Like it's an active thing that we do and there's never sort of like a clear thing of what happened but it's always again something that's in flux So I kind of wanted to play with that And that's where also the double sided paintings came into the mix because you also in some ways can't keep what's on the other side of it exactly clear that's in your head So you're constantly kind of walking around to one side and saying okay was it like this or was it like that And for me that's how memory kind of functions as well too So there's an image that I have repeated but maybe slightly different on one side And so it's like oh maybe the last time I saw them you know no she was wearing a red sweater Oh no it was like this And so it's kind of like playing with this yeah the slipperiness of relationship and memory And then I was also thinking too about so especially in the Caribbean a lot of people left because of economic opportunity in like the 60s and 50s And for example a lot of women it was easier for them to leave because you could get domestic visas to places So women would migrate and start to be anchors for communities And this could also mean maybe leaving your partner behind or even leaving your children behind as well too So it was also this kind of negotiation that where it had to seem worth it that you left So there's always this kind of idea of this hope on the horizon that was all worth it But also trying to remember how things were And then historically in my community too the reunification of these families also came with new negotiations like was it worth the distance Was it worth the time But then as I said maybe they were new they were economic anchors for several generations of people like you know my family we were all in Toronto because an aunt got a visa just randomly to Canada And then now maybe there's like a hundred of us who live there and change the course of the history of who we are as a family So I also started the series with that kind of thing in mind with maybe like the mother and the child and the woman as an anchor And I was also thinking too of like the writing desk as well And so that's how this installation sort of came about Growing up as well when you would get the mail there would be a special air mail envelope that had a red and blue around it And when you saw that in the stack like you knew it was something coming from home And so it was almost like a hand reaching out from another location at another time and sort of affecting your life in the present So it's all these little objects of material culture that you collect along the way that kind of tell the story of distance and relationship And then I also started thinking about these doilies and I started painting them because my grandma had them all over the house and my grandma used to make them And you would put them everywhere on everything It would be on like a desk here flowers anything like if there's empty space there's a doily And it was about beautification but also that you had things to take care of as well too So thinking about care and time because also these were objects that took quite a long time to make And you would make them with people and you would talk and somehow you'd get a whole family history in that time you were spending together making a doily or making something And where maybe people were more off guard and kind of candid and tell you something you've never heard before that kind of explains like it's a mystery you know So I also think there's some kind of like aura embedded in these objects as well too So they almost become like little shrines where you kind of mix the sacred and profane together How you develop your communication language between surrealism and this community that perhaps appears distanced and disconnected Why you had to make division into connection So like why surrealism in a way Just trying to understand your process Right OK So I'm always starting with I'm always cutting out things and I'm taking photos of things and I'm collecting them So in a way I'm creating an archive that I've had for maybe 15 years that I'm constantly like sifting through And in a way it's kind of interesting because I've kind of created a little encyclopedia of time or oh yeah I remember when things were like this or this door like this So it's also kind of like an archive And I'm somehow intuitively maybe mixing up a space in a hand or a color And when I feel that I found the right part that goes with it the right shadow that tells the story I'm trying to tell about that painting in that moment then I will make a collage like physically make a collage And then I will kind of play around with it And then I will paint it And sometimes I'm repeating these objects And sometimes in another painting they kind of have a different meaning as well too Or maybe one half of an object is in one painting and then five years later the bottom half of somebody can show up in something else And then for me it also makes this connection across time because I'm also trying to tell a really long story I think as well Does that answer your question do you think Yes yes And how do you think that you are depicting this woman Is it a way for you to depict love for your culture and your past Or you are figuring out a possible future back Hmm I think somehow I'm making now that I'm saying all of this to you like I'm making a family album like an extended family album So it's a very quiet personal family album but it's also like a historical archive as well too I think that's what I'm doing I think somehow I'm weaving the history of these places and the history of migration with a tiny family story And one of my first loves is also really literature And for me I love like a family saga where they're following a family for like 500 years or something like this Which one I mean my very first one to be perfectly honest was like Sweet Valley High I think like when I was like 11 years old and it followed her family from Sweden to America But you know anywhere lots of them Queen the Caribbean anything to do with the Caribbean John Rhys I'm really interested in how all these different worlds kind of meld together Isabel Allende I'm just thinking off the top of my head does this Jamaica Kincaid does this really well And so for me it's about telling the history of the world but also in a way that has meaning because it's interpersonal and it's families and it's relationships and not necessarily abstracted Any question So you mentioned that you use collage Is it just to help you visualize the work before you paint so you first make a collage and then look at it and start your painting Yeah So in the past I'd actually incorporated the collage into the work I was painting and collaging at the same time But then like you said I kind of realized it was really more like sketching for me in a stand in So I can make a collage and I'm not necessarily exactly depicting the thing in the collage so I can kind of change it But it's just a way for me to get the idea and form or the narrative or the story that I'm trying to tell But can you explain of course you're a painter you could also just have a sketch Yeah But you choose to look at the collage So what do you get from it that you would not get from the figures of your imagination or a simple sketch Because also what I'm also trying to do is I think pick out things in the world I think that we're very also inundated with images in general like we're always taking this in And I think what I'm trying to do is somehow inject recognizable things that are in the world to also trigger in the viewer like maybe this is a thing that I saw and for the viewer to have a slower read So to say like oh did I see this Is this from somewhere And I want the viewer to kind of think about that in a dream like sort of way Because I can just kind of make up a whole world and I can invite you in but I also somehow want this world to somehow be a little bit grounded for the viewer as well too Because I want them to think it could have possibly be something they could enter or have seen before Maybe that's it because I like your work and they get attention So you cannot just look at it and pass by And I personally am trying to understand what that is And as you explained it does help me But still there is something about them that just makes me want to understand it And I feel like I'm not able to which is a feeling that I don't typically get I mean for example when you were explaining about the migration and so on I could not see that But when you said about the past finding its trace in the present that I can see like these hands that come does not belong to this place as if it's just imposed on it But at the same time it's part of the scene So that I could see Maybe that girl also I would see as a migrant feeling that it just doesn't belong to the place But like I said it's a bit too profound for me and it just gets my attention And I am thankful that you also give explanations Maybe your technique also that just basically what I see is a reflection of what you had seen in a collage And because I don't see that part to me it's just like a mystery But I just get the effect of it I very much like your work Thank you Yeah I think that's an interesting thing that you're saying I think there's like somehow an aura of something that still exists and something that I've seen in my translation of it that I think somehow still exists in the work because I pulled it from the world I think that might be true as well And it's funny you say about okay it makes you stop and maybe you don't understand it and then you want to think about it further I also like to think about that too like top down processing versus bottom up processing because our brain filters out things that we think we know all the time It goes got it that's a table got it that's a face And we're focused on a task But when we don't understand something our brain kind of stops and slowly does sort of a search and be like do I have something in my archive that matches this And so that's what I think I'm also trying to do with the work as well by bringing out things in the world or creating a deja vu I had one painting in a show where somebody came up to me and said I know this is like a really weird question but is that Diana Ross's hand And I said yeah actually it is And I thought and this is like the thing I kind of like live for this kind of weird algorithm because she had seen this painting of Diana Ross sort of holding the cheek of her daughter in this photograph from like maybe 10 years ago but she had this memory that she had seen it And so it really clicked And it's those types of things that kind of like give me goosebumps So you say like oh yeah maybe if I made it all up maybe there aren't these moments but I kind of like that thing where okay maybe spooky yeah the ghost of something you'd seen kind of shows up If I may ask another question do you have a feeling tone associated with these different paintings or a general feeling tone with your paintings A feeling like a vibe of sadness happiness I don't know being estranged not belonging or whatever I think for me I think the feeling is like do you know like Sodaj this kind of music from Cape Verde but like lusophone And it's this thing where you have a longing for something It's more than longing It's like longing for a place and like home but maybe you'll never really reach home but you're also kind of enjoying this feeling of attempting to find home as well and so I think a lot of my work is about how you make home in different places because it's about moving So this idea of trying to make home or yeah a longing or a Sodaj I think describes my whole practice actually now that I think about it We know that Coribita has a very big background of knife painting you go back all this area We witnessed that all these people are tough painting without any education or school Do you have any connections to that or do you learn somewhere painting in the school or something I went to school for but I didn't hear the first part of what you said There is a research that there was a lot of knife painting in the Caribbean where people never learned somehow in the school or educated for painting and they had great artworks out of there And I want to know if you have any connection in this I mean I went to school for paintings but I also grew up with a father who did not go to school for painting but always did watercolors and was very beautiful and they were great And also like you said painters from the Caribbean as well too had no training but painting and making marks of how we lived was still really important And there was this artist called David Moore who in some way my family might be connected to from Tobago And if you go to any Caribbean person's house in the 70s and 80s all across the diaspora they will have a print of these David Moore paintings because it was something you could take that reminded you of home But for me there is always this kind of now that you think about it this depiction of trying to find home and bringing home with you but for myself yeah I trained in painting I mean this education of this figurative painting where do you think that you get it from You went to the school of art or you get it by yourself I was always before I went to art school I was always even just drawing and painting by myself And I only had a teacher say oh you should go to art school And I was like what is an art school This was not mentioned to me in an immigrant house that there is such a thing as an art school to go to It was very much like do something very secure that yeah to make yourself financially secure but also like idly secure so it's just something I always grew up loving because we were around it somehow but yeah turning it into a formal education only came later with teachers saying something to me Do you have a specific way that you start your paintings and you finish them or every painting has a different start or finish I think I work in groups in a series of paintings so like this series of painting will have like a style or something that I'm gonna say I almost think of it like a novel like I'm writing like a novel and so everyone every series of work kind of has a different feeling or thesis I think And my guess is you write also Pardon Do you write I used to write and I write a little bit I'm thinking of ways actually now to incorporate that writing back into the work actually Thank you I have two things to say First of all I really resonated with what you said about the yearning and making a place like home because you're forced to through all the migration and the moving of family Because I feel like that's a trait of people who live in the now like you have like this endless now but also that causes you to yearn like for something permanent that's like infinite So I think then you have like a constant yearning for something that's maybe not there like a perfect situation that will not exist but you don't need it because you make the best of what you got The other thing I was going to say is I can see that a lot of your paintings incorporate perspective and framing in a very interesting way particularly that one obviously because it has a lot of depth but especially the one with the face behind the bed because like the blue is first it's in front of the bed and later it's in the back and then there's like this you know like it's like a little bit crooked here but that's not the it's a bit surreal because it's not the perspective of the room right And I wanted to ask does that do you only see use and appreciate that as like an aesthetic thing or do you have something else with perspective and depth that you like to incorporate Yeah I think what I'm trying to do is aesthetic but also somehow I think I'm trying to connect different worlds and each of the worlds may have a different set of physics and a different set of perspective and then somehow if they were all kind of mashed together your brain is trying to make sense of like how you can navigate like a path through so yeah I think that's on purpose yeah But I wanted to ask you if you also have an archive of objects because they also look somehow personal if you bring them from somewhere or you for the project that you work at you go look for it and then like a collage it becomes part of Yeah so I used to have an archive of objects as well too but then there is something about like moving from space to space then you end up shedding so much stuff you really make decisions about what you're going to carry so that's made me kind of shed it so maybe I have an archive of objects at my mom's house you know or like someone's house in London or something that I might think okay I have a project coming up and I might come for that object or something like that But like do you have when like for this did you have in mind like the object that you wanted to have and then you went to look for it or you were more like a kind of casual like you saw it and then became part of the it was which one came first you had something in mind or it came spontaneous I think I think the doily somehow came first because I had some of my grandmother's doilies and I was just really I knew I wanted to make a painting with them but I didn't know like why or what what I wanted to do with it and I think I took some photos of different ways of painting it and then I took a step back and I was like why am I obsessed with this doily like what does this doily kind of mean to me so maybe it started with an object and then it and then I moved backwards And then my and I had some of my grandmother's doilies and my aunt gave me some and then as soon as the project was done she was like okay and now I want them back by the way so some of them are temporary objects as well too So thank you very much Shannon it was really like fascinating to go through your journey and we're gonna have five five minutes of break we drink some water and then after we're gonna gather for the symposium so thank you Shannon Guys we're about to start it's the moment the magical moment is about to come So far we really enjoyed the going through the journey of Shannon and right now we're gonna share our view about the works related to the concept and the question that we raise today is what memory place or story still shape the way you see yourself today So we're gonna go and each one of you will be invited to share their thoughts and emotional spark by the works or one of the works and keep in mind the question so what story memory or place still shape the way you see yourself today So can't wait to start and Amir I could start with answering the question more directly but I would like to elaborate on what I said earlier because I was thinking about it and this is my interpretation of what I see so you tell me how far off it is because there are some artists that of course have something in their head their imagination and they try to depict it somehow they paint their paint there are some people that just start doing their thing and then just flows and to me it feels it is not even a combination of both it is two layered because of the process that you do so you have some ideas and you told the stories of those ideas then you try to first do the first step and as it happens you have the second layer of your imagination and you just look at it and have your second interpretation and then you depict the final work so to me it feels like the complexity or maybe you should not call it complexity the reason that it's so profound is that it is twofold so it is the collective unconscious going through you by looking at your own work which is a product of the imagination that it started from at the first place plus the story that you have because there are some pieces for example now going to the general question that was posed like for example when I see these figures the hands or the limbs to me that's very clear that this comes from some either temporal or spatial place could be your own memories past experience and so on but there are some parts that are also what Jim said like this creates these supernatural feelings of course of kinds and it just carries on and you see there's something there and what is with this girl and you don't quite understand it and I think that's actually the reason that I find this work so captivating Thank you very much Amir Can you start by saying your name so like for the recording part Yeah my name is Lisa and I actually prefer going to exhibitions and not knowing the interpretation behind it like actually prefer not knowing the backstory so it was a first for me I really like this painting because it looks I don't know kind of divine Yeah and we were supposed to answer how places connect to the way we live now or what was the question How memory a place or a story still shape the way you see yourself today even if you don't realize it Yeah of course So I'm not from here and I think it influences my life a lot Like where I grew up and also some views that I still don't fully share with Europeans from the EU And I think it's something that I kind of have to work through every day and also some obviously legal stuff And yeah I think it's something a few of my friends Thank you So Renata Yeah First of all I think I like most that picture it was the painting it was really beautiful Because I think it also goes really deep And talking about the other thing that how these kind of memories are connected to me I would say it's mostly I feel really connected to my roots like I'm from Peru So it's like I don't live in Peru either I don't live here for now but I'm living in Panama And despite of being the same continent there's many variations But this is gonna sound a bit probably silly but it's something that is really important for me And no matter where I am it's something about the culture but also the heritage the things that we have with the Inkas about how we connect also the soul and these kind of things But at the same time it comes combined with the food So it's something that is really important for me and no matter where I am I'm always like trying to seek these kind of things or remembering how my mom used to cook these kind of things or like connecting it And also remembering how it was with ah this has a story behind because this food is prepared this way because of blah blah blah So I think these kind of things are always like with us depending also how much we want to keep being truthful to our roots So that's from my side Thank you very much I'd like to pass if that's okay Of course I was not prepared to be the next one So my name is Vanessa and so the question was how memories places shape us Oh I don't feel that there is a particular one I feel very much which I think is also connected with what Sean explained so far that identity is not something fixed It's something that gets shaped every day and it's also been a thought that has been explored for a very long time in literature and philosophy about sculpting your identity every day And what contributes to that is basically everything that surrounds us and the way that we relate to it I feel that the more like at least I don't know if it's my sensation but it's something that always really touched me are people that age and the more that they become older or at least it's also what I experienced with my grandma when they experienced something like dementia or one of these like very bad illness they're very um these neurodivergent problems The things that stay the most fixed in the memory is just the childhood Like you don't remember anymore what happened in your adulthood or the last memories which really stay fixed as rather like the first instance that you had in this place And I've always felt that that's true and somewhat telling because all the first experiences that we have are what shaped afterwards our reactions how we adjust So it's especially the first dynamics that you have with your family the first dynamics that yeah I think in the first nucleus independently if it was of course positive negative abusive or non abusive it's also it's what starts sculpting you in a way Because it's very hard to have also non language objectives that define a person in an absolute way It's mostly relative You're intelligent when you're faced with a problem you're generous if you do something with somebody So I feel that this dynamic with objects with people constantly defines you and shapes you across the time So at least that's how I see it or at least I also saw it connected with the perspective of this room from the or the yeah the different sort of play with the surrealism and the phases in the mirror So I don't know This is what at least I feel And recently I was also reading a book but this word stayed in my mind and it was the last words It's a bit like a misuse It's not even certain historically but of François Rabelais this French poet that when he was dying he was saying I go after a great perhaps And I feel that that's a little bit also in life that you always search for this great perhaps also in your identity So now I'll give it to Farid Thank you Farid Do you want it Do you Okay Thank you Look from okay it's a painting I'm a painter It's a connection But it's also automatically the memories that you have you cannot organize them in your mind and say no I'm going to be connected with something specifically this happened automatically in all the human species Maybe also to animals I don't know about the memories but the thing that really captured me like is these things around from your grandmother you said the handmaid In Greece there is a tradition we have it also a lot and you prepare for your grandsons granddaughters It's like something that you get in your wedding And my grandmother she has a mound of it for me So I don't know what to do with it So seeing that I said hmm that's a good idea to use it on artworks and stuff like that Because I have a lot You know That's all So Thank you so much Farid I think I really like your paintings They're very surreal in nature That's the big theme And I think that one was my favorite because I lived in Paris for a couple of years So I think it subconsciously came to my mind because I think as a student that was one of the free things to do Just go and sit in front of the park of the Eiffel Tower drink some wine and just lay down And I think Paris was also the city that introduced me to art because before that I was not super into it And I had a student visa which allowed me to get into all those famous museums for free So it really helped with the exposure And yeah I think probably that city shaped me quite a bit and getting to know art and getting more into it Thank you Yeah I think as I already told you I think my favorite is this one because even if it's maybe It looks a little bit out of composition maybe with the others because it's not as surreal but it actually is the most surreal for me because it's really like a portal to another world And I already complimented you on the shadow This is the best part I think That's what makes it surreal And I think it relates also a lot with what you were saying with the time connecting You are here and there at the same time And it did remind me if I have to make the connection with the question you did of the first moment I realized about the present which is the realization You know that the present is the only thing that exists But there was a moment in which I actually realized that I didn't have to care about past or future You just have to care about what you do right now So the present moment it's just a connection of present moments and you can be in many different places like with the painting at the same time So yeah that's the connection I can do with this Thank you Lea So I actually do have to answer your question today with a personal anecdote because what is absolutely wonderful to me about your work is that it reminds me of one of my very dear friends who has a quite similar family history to yours And she was my first roommate when I also left Germany So we both ended up living together in a new culture And I just remember her having such a fundamental impact on me because of how rich her personality and her insights into life were just based on her heritage as well and her approach to life And I always really admired her and I love the fact that I see so much of her personality also in your work which is fantastic So thank you very much Thank you Lea Hi I'm Mareike and thank you so much for the presentation and the water and everything It's really very nice but for me also a little overwhelming experience actually because I think there are so many things that my mind at the moment is connecting from your work My personal experiences maybe somehow but also time culture history I just speak freely I don't know if this makes any sense but for example I remember being on Curaçao I have been there twice and I also have visited art museums but also other museums about the history of Curaçao and this is something that I'm at the moment reminded of And then it's also that I have a very sweet memory maybe that's now connected to this identity thing I took from the group that's also connected with it So when you have memories and in this case this is my personal experience but it's always like how do they make you feel kind of maybe And I liked what I heard from the group that it's about you to maybe think about what kind of identity you would like to have today so that it's not about being shaped from the past and all the history history history but also about the question who do I want to be today Maybe also how do I want to feel today But then there's for me always a question can you really guide yourself through it Because you have been shaped by so much like culture like history like I don't know and the minds of people also like there's so much from that outside which has been there in your brain if you want or not And yeah that's a lot kind of But I take this all into consideration and actually I would love to have some kind of written things from the things everybody said in the group if this is possible We're going to share an article about it Maybe I don't know But I really would like to read some of the things you said again because it's so much you know my mind is still trying to make sense of it kind of something like that And so I would really like to read that if it's possible Of course of course Mareike We will see I mean no pressure That's the purpose of recording Yeah perfect perfect And last but not least I was also thinking about the craftsman's work like these little things you have everywhere So thank you so much that you also told this because I was really like it was the first thing in my life that it took my attention And I think this is maybe something I was wondering like where did this start Because we had this also in other parts And is it something from I don't know from the Netherlands maybe in that sense Or is it something that's universal like that has been everywhere I don't know So where does exactly this maybe but I mean like craftsmanship this was everywhere kind of but exactly this Like I think it's very specific So I think it's Dutch but I'm not sure And I also have it in my family so from my grandmother's side and this was so sweet This is such a sweet memory to see it in your work So okay thank you so much Thank you Marijke Sorry I was not able to understand what exactly the question was from So like first of all Chen you just shared your thoughts and emotions on one of the works or on the work So it's three But the question that we raise today is what memory story or place still shape the way you see yourself today even if you don't realize it You can answer to the question I mean it's amazing I love your play with surrealism and perspectives and obviously also the deep history behind it Considering the question I think like you said implied in your question there are so many things that shape us in such a subtle and indirect way that we probably don't even notice it most of the time I think for me it's a lot like the vibes of the situation that was created when I was a child for me Because when you have children or when you are a child everything seems a bit more magical because people like your elders hopefully they create it in a way that's magical for you For me it was always Halloween for example that we'd turn all the lights off and I would get a lantern with a candle in it and then I would just walk around and look at the shadows that would cast on the walls And I think it's these small things It's not like the things like the objects but it's the feelings you had in those moments and they always come back to me I always have experienced some moment where I come back to that moment in my childhood because of that even though it's very indirect And somehow I feel that with your art too What I didn't say earlier about the perspectives for example the mirrors over there because I think obviously it's a very nice touch with the gloves too But for example this is a moment even though it's not part of my history it enacts some form of nostalgia in me because I understand okay someone had a mirror like this and it was a part of their daily life and I can emphasize with the nostalgia that it invokes in somebody from that family or that person that experienced it So I think it's those vibes that make or break it for me That's such a point Thank you First of all thank you one more time for this great experience The painting I resonated the most is that oval one And as you mentioned in the pause we had after the presentation that the emotion pictured on this painting can be perceived differently depending on what other paintings are put near to it And it really made me think of how actually memories can be fragmented and how the attitude towards those memories can change depending on the situation you associate them with or you are currently experiencing And this is I feel somehow connected to this idea of the collage And this is one of the reasons why I really found this idea of the collage interesting because this memory can be changed and this perceiving of it can be changed And sometimes it can be even forgotten it can be even fabricated so many things can be done to it And so different feelings can arise and different attitudes towards it And yeah that's all Thank you Angelika Omer I think you didn't speak yet right If you want you can share your perspective On the question You can openly share your perspective on the works on one of the works and you can answer to the question of the concept what memory or place or story still shapes the way you see yourself today I think my parents are from Turkey and a lot of this picture especially reminds me of the house of my grandmother how the light reflects the floor and the wooden shape And yeah Thank you very much Can I follow up on what Vanessa and Jem said about the childhood memories I think the great Dostoyevsky in Brothers Karamazov there is a line says nothing is more I don't remember the exact adjective that he used but more important and more nicer than childhood memories And the best among us are the memories that you have in your parents home So I'm not grandpa old yet but I also feel that as I'm getting older I also get this effect of childhood memories It's not exactly happy it's even deeper And I feel like that state of being exists by itself somewhere deep in my subconscious Probably it also has changed so I have some snapshots and they become more and more influential in my today's being And if I'm really stressed or for whatever reason not feeling that good it's just the most grounded that I can be So there are snapshots and I don't remember being that happy at the time So when you're a kid you always also think oh something's not that nice But now when you look back it feels almost I wouldn't say magical it's not like whimsy because when you say magical it makes it like fantasy or not deep It is very profound it makes you grounded and it becomes even more valuable for me Actually I've never talked about this to anyone I do like to see if other people also feel that way because I did not feel like that like 10 years ago Of course I always had memories okay I went somewhere and I had fun But now it starts to become some roots that I can actually feel It might have to do with the fact that I'm also a migrant so it's not exactly nostalgia but maybe for me it is more valuable Maybe if you are still living I don't know in the same hometown that you were born you don't feel that special about those memories But for me it's basically forming some part of my character even though not literally So I don't see the world as I would see if I was living there But still I feel like I'm really in the ground itself like the air itself is in me and this is not something that I would feel at the time But now I feel like I'm still like the air that I breathed I don't know 20 years ago 30 years ago is now in me talking now which is a very interesting feeling and it's a very nice default status that you can go into if you need to I talked too much today No coming here is always a pleasure and thank you so much for your contribution And Shannon if you want you can close the circle and share whatever you want about this moment and then we can close Yeah I just wanted to say thank you for your comments as well too because it also brought up a lot of things in me too that I didn't realize that I was thinking about so also thank you for that And yeah this idea maybe it's because I don't I'm very far from the place that I grew up that I go back to these moments or these grounding moments that somehow make you who you are now and think about what it means to have grown up in that time and place and how it makes me who I am now and how I navigate the world If I was to pick a piece if that's what we're doing as well too that shapes I mean I think it's hard to say I keep vacillating like a lot of my childhood memory is not exactly sitting at that desk but a type of desk and watching my aunts and my mother get ready and go out in the world and trying to make sense of okay who am I supposed to be and what am I supposed to do and I realized it was looking at women or people in the act of self making and trying to figure that out and really understanding okay people actually construct themselves I get it that's interesting and how am I going to construct myself And I think I maybe keep going back to this painting too because I've had a conversation with a few people and yeah the emotion on this person's face changes from time to time when I come in and if it's you know if she's sad if she's enchanted if she's scared but I liked your word also too divine and I think somehow there's this element of it in it for me too that it's all the emotions wrapped in one somehow and that's connected to like all memories and it's the porthole to all the things somehow So yeah maybe I'll sort of close with that I think Thank you This was really fantastic Thank you everyone
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