Qualia

Abstract

When I look back at times that once were, and where I am today, I find one consistent factor. I have just as many questions today as I did back then. I do not remember my 9th birthday, I do not know the exact location I was on January 3rd, 1996, and what I was doing last Tuesday has already escaped me. These particular moments are ambiguous. The memories that find their way back into my present thoughts are for one reason or another particularly dignified. They find their way and have become the defining factors of how my character has come to be. So I ask myself, where do memories come from? How, or why do certain events remain in my thoughts while others slip away? What had happened in those lost moments? When we are forced to connect the dots of our past, one inevitable side affect occurs. We obtain a distorted version of the original moment, where the missing pieces must be filled in and translated. Qualia is a body of work I have created to present my journey. How we feel a memory certainly is unaccompanied by directions. These moments are filled with uncertainties to how, when, or why certain events took place. The work catalogs my curiosity of how our thoughts travel through the missing moments of life. It is within my recycled thoughts that I can examine the fragments, gaps, and transformations. Qualia, by definition, is being aware that we are having an experience, it is the acknowledgement of a sensation. I have created a body of work to explore the sensation of recalling memories. The mixed media exhibition brings to life my curiosity about memory and the search to understand it.