WHAT’S LEFT OF THE CHILD WE WERE?
This installation is a memorial to childhood nostalgia, and studies the very nature of the feeling from person to person. Exploring a discussion with my mother and sister – the closest persons to my childhood, the whole thing aims to try and create an echo between past and future, asking questions rather than answering them. Axed on my personal experience, it hopes to find a universal resonance in viewers.
The tent is both a shelter and a home, an inaccessible reminiscence of bliss. In a child-like manner, it is embroided with with words linked to my personal research on the project.
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“This research having followed a very personal axis, it only made sense that my actual memorial would do the same. The first thing I did was calling my mother and asking her to put my sister on speakerphone, proceeding to record the call.
I was surprised to have so much come out from the discussion, to have it sum up so many issues. How my sister and I have completely different views of our childhood. How my mother has regrets, too. How nostalgia can also be about the future. It all converged and helped me understand my whole quest a little bit better. Sentences about Lebanon’s current situation are mixed in, as light allusions to the present, to my personal history to my country, and to how far away everything feels to me.
I then reworked the audio file, playing a recording of heavy wind over it, as I wanted the whole feel of it to be very distant, coming almost from another time. I’ve also intentionally left out most of the answers from the questions that were asked, because – to be honest – I don’t really have them, and I wouldn’t want to impose answers on anyone.
Then came the matter of the tent itself. Working with a bedsheet and embroidery, I wanted it to have a characteristic feel of childhood. Words are sewn onto it in the three primary colours – “what is nostalgia, what is melancholy, what pushes you forward, what doesn’t”, as a way to symbolize the whole thought process behind it. On the top of it are the words “a tent is a shell”, reinforcing the idea of a haven, or even of memories as a portable home– a portable longing to return home. The tent is sewn shut, affirming an impossible return.
The translation of the conversation in English is projected onto the front of the tent. The audio comes from inside of it, muffled and secret.
The memorial is meant to be set on display, preferably in a room full of light, in a museum or gallery, making the embroidery visible and using a strong enough projector for the words to be visible. It seems to me like the ideal setting, as it is an element of past time, which I would like to be treated as such. I envision it as something quite intimate, which would require both envy and effort to be seen or reached.“
tent when presenting
tent in ideal conditions
AUDIO + TRANSLATION
