2015
Collage, acrylic paint and pencil on handmade and brown paper
297 × 420 mm
The physical dimensions of the houses we lived in become inbuilt in our memories. Their familiarity makes it possible to recall every room, corner and hallway. It is the domestication of a space that engenders our personal narratives by creating and attaching layers of memories to it, thus making a house a home and space a place.
The present work wonders about the human relationship to places and to notions of home when familiar structures are not in place. When confronted with a new space, a different geographical location, perhaps the idea of home widens up and becomes more porous. The temporary structures evoke the fragmentation of memories and the attempt to bring them together to induce a sense of home and self identification. Their slight distortion and fragility are intended to suggest the ever changing but constant construction and domestication of our surrounding spaces. The use of handmade paper is also an allusion to domesticity and to acting upon our material world.
Bio
Iolanda Rocha is an artist living and working in Belfast. Her interests lie in the human relationship with space and architecture, particularly surrounding ideas of shelter and domesticity.