MEMORIES OF A GRANDMOTHER I’VE NEVER KNOWN. Painting

In my painting, I try to establish a connection with myself from early childhood through the few photos that have survived from that time. Eventhough the photo features my grandmother and me, it doesn’t answer the question: where was I then? Who was I with? What has influenced me? At frst glance, it might seem strange, but I truly don’t recognize my younger self, and I don’t know my grandmother who holds me in her arms. It’s said that the early years shape the rest of one’s life, but how can one determine from a photograph what has molded me? In today’s world flled with photo and video equipment, young individuals have a complete audiovisual story of their growth into adulthood, to construct a link from the present to their past. However, people like me have to rely on remnants of memories and isolated documentary evidence. We perceive our past not directly through informational materials but through the perception prism of others and the oral stories of adults about our childhood. Our image of the past is blurred, fragmented, pieced together like a patchwork quilt. In the fading somnambulistic image of the past, it’s impossible to escape the observer’s effect. Trying to piece together a comprehensive mosaic from the fragments of pictures, we bring into it self-reflection, like the symbolic eye (the black sphere in the painting), which tries to look into the past and see oneself in the fragments of the past.