postmemory
Marianne Hirsch defines ‘postmemory’ as “the relationship that the ‘generation after’ bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before-to”. Postmemory is a memory never directly experienced woven into the tension between the records of the past and the reconstruction of the present. A memory that is someone else’s yet one’s own. A projection of the past emerging from collective memory, family stories, upbringing, emotions, resentment, trauma, habits, historical education, photos, souvenirs, rituals
Postmemeory is passed on, given, and handed. It can be created through hearing horrifying and traumatizing stories or it can be felt in the silence and in the absence, recreated through filling the gaps. While postmemory does not imply any significant connection to the concept of erasure, in reality, these tend to often lie close to each other as events resulting in collective trauma often brought erasure with them. A collective lack of memory is when a group of people has gone through efforts aimed at their erasure or they are lacking a significant part of their identity can be seen as a generational trauma. My experience of postmemory is often an experience of what I did not get to know, it presents itself in blanc spaces, interrupted family histories, nomadic lack of belonging, and lack of local identity or cultural belonging.
This project is a visual exploration of the subject of postmemory, faded memory, blank spaces, fragmentary memory, and erasure.
