A Trip Down Memory Lane: Memories in exhibits

A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE AN EXHIBITION THAT EXPLORES THE NON-LINEAR NATURE OF HUMAN MEMORY

TEXT: KANDECH DEELEE
PHOTO: KETSIREE WONGWAN

(For Thai, press here)

The exhibition A Trip Down Memory Lane traces the elusive and nonlinear trajectories of memory. Memory resists containment; it cannot be neatly shaped from beginning to end. Instead, its threads are intricately interwoven across both physical and abstract realms, linking the internal neural system with the external environment, personal space with the collective domain, and official histories with the oral narratives of communities. This exhibition explores those intersections through eight artworks curated by the GMT± Collective.

Notably, memory, though often framed as an abstract cluster of thoughts, in fact originates from the physical interplay between sensory perception and surrounding objects. In Memory Machine (2024), Yanisa Niennattrakul presents an installation of cyanotype prints derived from layered brain scans. These translucent prints are arranged to allow viewers to walk through them, progressing from one layer to the next, until they arrive at a projected hospital image cast onto the final print. Along this immersive passage, hospital sounds and scents are embedded into the installation¹, revealing how memory is constructed through the convergence of sensory experiences.

Because memory is not a product of a finished assembly line, Memory Machine does not aim to simulate a complete process of ‘creating’ memory. Rather, it reveals the interlocking mechanisms of relationships that collaboratively ‘assemble’ memory into being. The light from the projector, cast repeatedly onto the fabric, merges with the sunlight captured within the cyanotype surface—forming an allegory of overlapping spaces. While one light projects what is external, the other illuminates what lies within. Human memory, then, is not a straightforward act of recording, but a complex process of continual reinterpretation. Memory Machine demonstrates that memory is not merely about ‘reading what is seen,’ but also about ‘overwriting what is.’ The light in Yanisa’s work offers a perspective on the genesis of memory as something that emerges in the in-between—between nature and construction, the physical and the abstract. All of these elements flow into one another, blurring boundaries until they become inseparable.

While Yanisa’s work reveals how physical elements collaboratively construct memory into form without a defined body, Carry Around (2024) by Linh San presents a counter-process—one in which memory is transmuted into physical form. San transforms ‘Chiêc khǎn tay’ (handkerchief), a Vietnamese children’s song that connects her memories with her family, into a series of handkerchiefs embroidered with patterns made from her own hair. Each motif is a visual interpretation drawn directly from the song’s lyrics.

Flowers, combs, feet, cups—these images, ‘drawn’ with strands of hair, become bodies that hold San’s formless memories, rendering them stable and tangible. Carry Around offers insight into how San negotiates with memory: as a present-tense experience in dialogue with stories from the past. Memory, then, is not only about the ‘story’ but also the ‘telling’ of it. These embroidered bodies act as vessels that bind the past to the present—an interlude suspended in the instability of time. San’s black hair, intertwined with the white thread of the cloth, becomes a site of memory with the simultaneous potential to both preserve and recall.

As seen in San’s children’s song, memory extends across both personal and collective realms, embedding itself within and shaping spaces of shared experience. It gives rise to collective memory—one that acts in concert with broader networks of relationships. Kad Kong Ta Reflections from the Forest Concession Chronicles (2024) by Pitsawat Wannafoo explores the interaction between collective memory and the layered histories of Kad Kong Ta, a riverside timber trade center in Lampang that flourished during Siam’s centralization in the 19th century.

In this work, the artist layers photographs, official records, and ink drawings on tracing paper, allowing images and text to overlap and obscure one another. In some sections, images are superimposed onto words; in others, text fades into vagueness where imagery is absent. One can only fully comprehend the piece—either by reading the images or viewing the text—through their intersections, much like how collective memory becomes most legible when it resonates with official history. At the same time, state-sanctioned history often draws upon selected strands of collective memory to justify its narratives. Although both may refer to the same past, Pitsawat’s work reveals that they are not seamlessly aligned. The grammars of history and memory are in constant negotiation—contesting, appropriating, and colliding with one another.

What is particularly striking about this work is that the layering of photographs and documents does not overwhelm every inch of space. Portions of the piece are deliberately left bare, revealing the teakwood flooring beneath. The floor of the exhibition room is thus visually drawn into the work itself, evoking the latent power relations embedded in the site that date back to when this space once served as the former Ministry of Commerce of Siam. The official records, the community photographs, and the exhibition floor all reference teak, yet each from a different vantage point. Together, they negotiate and challenge the boundaries of history; boundaries that the centralized power of Siam could never fully contain.

A Trip Down Memory Lane offers a glimpse into how memory might be given ‘form.’ Yet in giving form to memory, the exhibition simultaneously reveals the fleeting and unstable nature of that form. While we may try to shape formless memory into a coherent figure, each attempt seems to dissolve back into obscurity and ambiguity. At best, we can only explore memory in the brief instant when the bubble of possibility expands, offering a momentary glimpse of how memory binds together uncertainty, weaving it into forms that resist finality.