Manifest

Manifest, 2018, screen print on newsprint, cardboard, foam core, found objects.  Memories are fragile things. The beginning of the story reveals a room of possessions. This chair was bought in Karachi and has seen a variety of uses: bums, clothes, towel racks, history. The painting is really a drawing, a map of remembrances and a diagram of journeys past and present. Proximity between memory and place is small, though it is growing ever wider with time. These plates and glassware, precious heirlooms now but cheap purchases when they were originally made, contain the usual trappings of memory. These possessions, such reminders of past journeys and experiences are cheap trinkets that grow in value over time. This cushion was hand-made with leftover bits of fabric and has been on many a bed, sofas, chairs, and the like, chewed on by many pets. Imbued with nostalgia, it is now invaluable. This rug, fraying and full of holes, was a copy of a more expensive carpet but in the absence of its original, it is too precious to be thrown out. What are these experiences, abstract now in the present but contained in these objects?