For the past few years, I’ve been living in another country as an expat. Like many others who have had almost completely to abandon their former lives, I left behind my home, my belongings, and parts of the life I once knew. I gave some away, threw some away, sold some, or hid some. While creating this work, I spoke with friends who shared memories of specific objects they left behind, ones they miss but might never be able to get back.
Each object presented here is blurred, embodying an indefinable yet universal image that invites viewers to project their own memories onto it. These objects exist more as archetypes than precise representations, each inviting you to imagine your own cherished possessions in their place. Details like brand, colour, and texture are left blank because only we, through our memories, can fill them in. And as the days of emigration pass and we become increasingly immersed in our new lives, these memories too fade, losing detail but remaining vivid in essence.
In these works, I use pale blue, a colour that evokes melancholy, sadness, and alienation. Blue is universal in its associations with melancholic memories, but its associations with tranquillity and nostalgia are personal and cultural, carrying a multitude of meanings for different viewers.
These objects remind us of what we left behind: objects that were once significant but we could not take with us into an uncertain future, objects we left behind on a journey to nowhere.
In this work, I explore how familiar objects: a chair, an old stereo, a bicycle — are transformed in our memories. When you look at a photograph of an object you call your chair, an old stereo, or a bicycle, you don’t see the object itself in clear detail. Instead, you fill its place with memories of your own chair, the one you loved, the one from your old house where you once thought you’d live for many years. You didn’t expect life to change so suddenly that you’d decide to leave everything behind: the house, the things, the life you built. Now these objects exist only in memories, fragments of the past that remain vivid but inaccessible. But now this is a new life, a new home, a new country, new people, new things.
(UN)FORGOTTEN OBJECTS
For the past few years, I’ve been living in another country as an expat. Like many others who have had almost completely to abandon their former lives, I left behind my home, my belongings, and parts of the life I once knew. I gave some away, threw some away, sold some, or hid some. While creating this work, I spoke with friends who shared memories of specific objects they left behind, ones they miss but might never be able to get back.
Each object presented here is blurred, embodying an indefinable yet universal image that invites viewers to project their own memories onto it. These objects exist more as archetypes than precise representations, each inviting you to imagine your own cherished possessions in their place. Details like brand, colour, and texture are left blank because only we, through our memories, can fill them in. And as the days of emigration pass and we become increasingly immersed in our new lives, these memories too fade, losing detail but remaining vivid in essence.
In these works, I use pale blue, a colour that evokes melancholy, sadness, and alienation. Blue is universal in its associations with melancholic memories, but its associations with tranquillity and nostalgia are personal and cultural, carrying a multitude of meanings for different viewers.
These objects remind us of what we left behind: objects that were once significant but we could not take with us into an uncertain future, objects we left behind on a journey to nowhere.
In this work, I explore how familiar objects: a chair, an old stereo, a bicycle — are transformed in our memories. When you look at a photograph of an object you call your chair, an old stereo, or a bicycle, you don’t see the object itself in clear detail. Instead, you fill its place with memories of your own chair, the one you loved, the one from your old house where you once thought you’d live for many years. You didn’t expect life to change so suddenly that you’d decide to leave everything behind: the house, the things, the life you built. Now these objects exist only in memories, fragments of the past that remain vivid but inaccessible. But now this is a new life, a new home, a new country, new people, new things.