one never remembers alone
USC Roski Graduate Gallery, January 15, 2020 – February 2, 2020
Curated by Loujain Bager, Eve Moeykens-Arballo, Bianca M. Morán, Carlo Tuason, and Joseph Daniel Valencia
one never remembers alone, an exhibition, film series, and pedagogical platform, examines the ways memory can be transmitted through generations, both temporally and spatially. The exhibition brings together artists whose work considers the notion that one’s past can be passed on to another. Employing archival and performative interventions in media such as photography, photomontage, video, printmaking, and installation, exhibiting artists jointly activate iterations of memory and formations of kinship, building bridges between themselves and their personal and/or collective lineages. These interventions put forth a visual language that attempts to unravel colonial narratives, convey the varied experience of movement and migration, and imagine an anti-colonial futurity.
The title one never remembers alone references how the concepts of collective memory, diaspora, and cultural identity function as social phenomena. This project interrogates the ways memories are formed through the bonds of kinship related to the experience of dispossession and diasporic movement. As a corollary, one never remembers alone also explores “rememory,” as coined by Toni Morrison in her novel Beloved. Rememory refers to the recollection of an obscured memory that can be similar to a haunting, an uncanny sensation of both familiarity and unfamiliarity.
Artists in the exhibition include: Amal Amer, Beatriz Cortez, Maria Dumlao, Sebastián Hernández, Ann Le, Joiri Minaya, Boone Nguyen and Adee Roberson.
one never remembers alone is curated by Loujain Bager, Eve Moeykens-Arballo, Bianca M. Morán, Carlo Tuason and Joseph Daniel Valencia, 2020 MA Candidates in Curatorial Practices and the Public Sphere Program at the USC Roski School of Art and Design.
This exhibition is accompanied by a website and blog platform. Find more information here.
Installation photography: Monica Orozco.
