Nichole Maury: LANDMARKS

I have developed a complicated, and sometimes contentious, relationship with the idea of home. A life interrupted by frequent movement, especially as a child, has left me with memories that are often uneven and ill-defined. Sometimes there are only fragments, a steep hill, an ugly red-patterned carpet, the sound of plastic on the windows in winter. Home was never a place of permanence or stability. Instead, I found comfort in the classroom, with its clearly defined rules and predictable routines. I performed these requisite and seemingly infinite acts of repetition, these rituals, stretched out on a faded flower comforter in my bedroom or tucked into some quiet corner of the house.

I’ve found that repetitive and iterative processes, such as copying, tracing, and rewriting, can lend a kind of lastingness to a thing – a word, an image, or a mark – suffusing it with more weight and importance with each recurrence. These actions also allow the thing to subtly shift and change, to become more nuanced, and so become more mine in some indefinable but intimate way. The loss and transformation inherent in these iterative processes mirror my attempts to preserve my history, existing as it does in disparate and disconnected pieces, but also the futility in doing so.

Gallery hours: Thurs – Fri 2-6pm, Sat – Sun 12-4 pm

This program is supported by a grant from the Athena Fund.