May 18, 1890, 31 years later

Artists

• Michelle Forsyth

Statement

“When responding to past events, I am particularly interested in exploring the fluidity of memory and work to re-examine past events in new ways. Counter to the images of spectacle that serve as the source material for this work, I have been traveling to sites of historical disaster to document what is left there after the passage of time. The resulting work—based on my own photographs—is done by hand, which facilitates a slowness that runs counter to the ubiquity of their original sources.

Using a compassionate process that is part requiem and part cathartic obsession, I translate these presences into thousands of sinuous loops of undulating color, intricately stacked and cut paper flowers, and diluted layers of watercolor to inscribe these images with traces of my own gestures, simultaneously testing the imprint of my own presence while evoking ideas about memory, loss and grief.”

-Michelle Forsyth