This exhibit uses a select group of five Artist’s Books from the Sherman Art Library Special Collections to explore memory: how do we cement our memories and, conversely, what happens when we can’t hold onto those memories?
These books creatively use translucent material, the flexibility of the English language, and unusual structures to convey, how we see it, a different aspect of memory.
Two of these books, Memory Loss and Book of Seconds, try to encapsulate the experience of dementia by including fragmented language and scattered thoughts. On the contrary, two other books represent ways that people secure their memories: in a typical book, a diary, a collection of poems (Words that Burn), or in a box, a gift, a keepsake (Haiku Box). Chapter Zero is a unique book of juxtaposed word pairings–reflecting the dichotomy of memory–the thin line between remembering and forgetting. The juxtapositions in the book also reveal a distinctive aspect of individualized memory: two people can have completely different accounts of the same event.
