Fear of Forgetting

This wearable sculpture was created in one week using mostly recycled and found materials. It represents the way memories can twist and be forgotten or mixed up. The mask and horns are an amalgamation of inspiration from different types of animals, with some features that match none. The cloak is made out of many different materials and objects taken from every day life. The strange and frightening appearance speaks to the great fear that comes with forgetting loved ones or important experiences.

Inspiration

For this project, I only had one week to design and build something out of mostly recycled materials. As a prompt, we were given an episode of the podcast Radiolab that explored memory and forgetting. I had recently experienced a death in my family, so this topic hit really close to home. The idea that came to me was making a cloak out of things from the trash, knitted together. All pieces of human life, representing the armor that experiences can build around our mind protecting us from forgetting.

As I finished the piece, I realized the cloak was more of an amalgamation of broken pieces. It didn’t look like armor, it was waste, chopped up and reformed in an approximation of clothing. Like the brain trying to form full memories and stories out of half remembered fragments.

The animal mask was part of that. I looked at a lot of pictures of masks from around the world before starting. Many masks are created as part of performances and festivals. They often depict people, animals, or spirits and gods that are important to the region. My mask wasn’t meant to symbolize any specific animal, but some kind of combination, like your mind might come up with if you couldn’t remember what an animal looked like. As I sculpted it, I realized I was sculpting something similar to the face of the person I was afraid of forgetting.

The Armagh Rhymers, Northern Ireland 2023