My Odd family Memories ( 2016)

Project statement:

Recently, as I was interested in understanding more about my family identity, I looked back at my family album and I felt something was missing from it. I then associated some of my family stories with certain archival photographs. Instead of filling those gaps I found in the album, I let the contrast speak for itself, showing often the disjunction between the texts and the pictures. The result is almost a sense of a surreal where the stories seem at odds with the photographs and the boundaries between fantasy and reality are blurred.

‘My Odd Family Memories’ touches different topics: it questions whether the subject of Memory is something manipulated by ourselves and if it is the mirror of true facts. At the same time, it enquires the purpose of the family album as a medium for relaying family values where the function of photography is to immortalise the ecstatic or harmonious elements of family life. Even if the stories portrayed in this project are events that do not have a photographic record and would not be included in the ‘ideal’ family album, I argue through my work that they still shape our vision of the our past and present.

Through the act of searching in my own archive and of associating oral and visual memory I challenge the conventional family roles and narratives as well as to establish a different interpretation of family behaviour that might change the idea of our history and present.