Qualification

SHARED MEMORIES

Gasco Room, 2020

Santiago, Chile

Dominique's exhibition gives a double meaning to the idea that memory and imagination are part of the same territory and share the same destiny, since in the act of remembering there are two inseparable processes: on the one hand, reminiscence, that is, bringing the absent into the present, and at the same time, creativity in the making of new images, since "the return of memory can only be done in the manner of becoming-image" (Ricoeur, 2004). The artist's drawings highlight this dichotomy by taking as their starting point a portrait that attempts to resemble its model as closely as possible—as is the case with photography—in contrast to freer productions such as drawing and embroidery, which lend an imaginative character, thus seeking the permanence of a memory that has many pasts, while simultaneously creating new identifications from the present. In this way, as viewers, we are confronted with our own identity and memory. The photographs in family albums, transferred to drawings, become mirrors with memory, where each image, without abandoning its status as a document, testimony, and trace, calls to us to the point where we see ourselves reflected in it, transporting us to our past to find our own stories within it. This characteristic is also revealed in a key component of her embroidered drawings: the blank space, which haunts us and insists that the past and memories will always be accompanied by a loss of information, understanding that there are things that escape us and that we don't retain, but also that we can have different memories of the same event or—as is the case here—the same memory of different events, “common memories.”

Danilo Espinoza