2023 - acrylic on canvas - two 48” x 48” or 122 x 122 cm panels
The TRAILING MEMORIES series interrogates the fragility of memory as a symbol of truth. It emphasizes how easily it can be manipulated, altered and obscured. It is ultimately a profound commentary on alternative facts, erasure, and the distortion of the past and the rewriting of history.
The artist begins by pouring white paint along a central line before using a roller to imprint a series of perpendicular white marking patterns on a stark black background. The initial white line evokes the ultimate truth and the perfection of unaltered memory appearing like a vivid flashback. With each repetition, the initial patterns tend to naturally recede and alter as they project outwards. The artist then deliberately further distorts the markings by painting over and altering them with black paint. Some patterns are subtly denatured, others more radically so. Yet in either case, these manipulations twist the concept of reality on its head as the act of adding colour in fact gives the visual illusion of subtraction. The black paint doesn’t merely obscure; it rewrites the narrative, symbolizing how truths and memories, once clear, can be intentionally manipulated. What was once white—a symbol of clarity, honesty and truth—becomes layered, blurred, or entirely erased, challenging the viewer’s perception of what is genuine. The black paint represents the forces of distortion: the slow decay of time, the trauma of extraordinary events, or the calculated interventions of external influences seeking to reshape collective or personal memories.
The resulting paintings suggest the visual language of electrocardiograms, seismographs, or geological formations, references underscoring the themes of life’s rhythms, the passage of time, and the imprints left behind. But these trails of memory are in fact altered, scarred, and incomplete. They mirror the vulnerability and malleability of our collective memory which gets distorted by time and external forces, intentional or otherwise. It is a powerful visual metaphor for truth’s paradox: memory and thus history is not black & white.
2023 - acrylic on canvas - 60” x 48” - 152 x 122 cm
2023 - acrylic on canvas - 47” x 39” - 120 x 100 cm