CHIMAERA
CHIMAERA
A large scale Print Installation
November 2018
CHIMAERA
“I stick on eyes
I peel off ears
I cut off fingers
I rip off a breast
This is my law of exchange
I prune it
I quarter it
Into choice and cheaper cuts
I dismember it
I apportion it
I hate all things linear
I pin it
I dry it
I dampen it
I dry it once more
And it brings forth nothing by chimaera.”
Annette Messager
This large print installation is my tribute to the artist Annette Messager. It is made up of fragments of photos found in a flea market and transformed into prints using Solar Plating Printmaking.
They live inside a vintage box frame which has been updated for this project. The many cropped images sit on top of, beneath, next to, or over the top of each other in a close, touching relationship – much like the jumble of memories we store in our minds. Images we have forgotten, or remember, or which we think we remember because we have seen the photograph.
The concept I am interesting in, in this work, is of Post Memory – a new theory in which academics argue that memory can be handed down from one generation to the next; as witnessed by the children of Holocaust survivors, who feel they know the pain of suffering endured by their family.
