Evie Perks

Tapestries of Recollection

My work explores the fragility and complexity of collective memory using family archival images, paint, layering techniques, and transparent fabric. At the core of this work is an interest in how memory functions, not as a simple captured moment, but as an experience that is constantly changing. Sourcing photographs from family archives, I begin my process by developing the photographs and their subjects into stencils that serve as vestiges of memory. Through extensive layering, I obscure and divulge the stencils to create a surface that mirrors the way memory distorts and maintains itself. Materiality and installation play key roles in this work; the layers applied to transparent fabric become a visual metaphor for the vulnerability of memories, the blurring of one moment into the next. The physical process of layering a stencil on top of another, covering, erasing, and preserving reflects the cognitive process of memory itself. The installation serves as a timeline, an evolution of memory as you walk through and between the work. The perspective of each memory also changes during this process, further mimicking the complex nature of memory. I invite viewers to see how memory is an act of reconstruction with every recollection.