Revisiting Reality. A Meditative Exploration of Life

When did you last visit your mother? What did you eat? Did she cook? What color was the plate? What about the garbage bag she gave you? What pattern was on her bedding? Simple questions that unlock a labyrinth of memories that define our lives.

For this project, I envisioned daily activities as meditative spaces, safe places for reflecting and re-examining memories. Daily life shared with a loved one becomes a fragile experience in the face of a precise indexing of reality. Apparently insignificant details transform into anchoring points, charged with meaning when we revisit them. The color of the plate can evoke not just a common meal but also moments of intimacy and comfort, a familial atmosphere that seems to fade away.

Photography captures a frozen moment, but in reality, the way we remember that moment transforms into a process of reflection. We do not retain exactly what happened; instead, we focus on how we felt during those moments. Time, in these memories, does not pass chronologically. It is indexed not by the clock’s hours but by sensations and emotions.

Memories thus become mediums of introspection, serving as a form of self-exploration. Daily life does not need to be justified or examined; it is lived and relived, offering us moments of peace and reflection. When we remember a holiday meal, we recount not just the facts but also the sensations and emotions that defined it: perhaps the smell of a freshly baked cake or the sound of loved ones’ voices, a melody that played in the background, all contributing to the construction of a memory.

This interplay of memory and emotion can be likened to the act of adding plasticine to a Polaroid. The Polaroid captures an objective moment in time, while the plasticine symbolizes the subjective layers we add to that moment as we recall it. Just as plasticine can reshape and redefine the image beneath, our emotions and perceptions alter the way we understand and connect with past experiences.

Thus, memories become not just simple moments in the past but integrated parts of our identity. Daily activities, especially those shared with loved ones, provide us with emotional refuge, a safe space to reconnect with ourselves. The past is not a fixed sequence but a dynamic landscape, rich with textures and shades, which we recreate each day through our memories, constantly reconfigured, always alive.