This alluring image was painted by artist Joana Ricou and is part of her One, Noone and One Hundred Thousand series, which explores how memory is formed and recalled. In explaining her inspiration for the series she told me:
I’m interested in the idea that we each are many – and that from moment to moment, we shift, split, merge, cooperate, compete or ignore ourselves. My home, studio and phone are covered in notes and reminders, an endless exercise in attempting to connect each moment to the next, or to the one that comes after that.
The series is inspired by recent research on memory that mirrors my daily experience. I find that the processes of painting and transferring parallel the processes of memory making and recall. Painting and transfers are like lossy filters that selectively and randomly keep information and also selectively and randomly lose information. They also modify and destroy their source as they build upon it, just as we massage our memories or past selves to fit our mood and circumstance, stringing them together in a narrative and filling them with meaning.
