Heritage Habitats is a series of physical spaces for contemplation and invocation of ancestry. Framed around nostalgia and memory, Kites, Cairn, Grove and Roots are large scale, sculptural and experiential installations that engage in viewers’ unique memories and experiences. In essence, the work emphasizes commonalities that bind people and cultures and serves as an expression of humanism.
Methods for creating these works involve appropriating imagery from our respective family albums then, framing our ideas around the experience generated from remembering our past. The images we select are iconic in nature, typical of pictures that exist in all family photo albums. They reference concepts linked to blueprints of identity and help us to find our place in a larger historical picture. We value history and tradition as the staples of human life while acknowledging that representations of realities are altered by elapsed time and convoluted memories.
The installations that comprise Heritage Habitats explore collective memories through vernacular photography and the act of pursuing one’s history as a universal human experience. Ultimately, the works are a residue of the process of self-discovery and catharsis. They are concerned with aspects of imaging oneself in a genealogical lineage while contemplating basic life stages: birth, infancy, youth, adulthood, old age and ultimately death.