Disappearing World is an installation of made and found objects, photos of a young woman and small boy. I want to know about their lives, the circumstances that brought them to this place.
They are strangers to me. I want to know why the boy, aged seven, is so weary? I want to know what casual crimes the woman with full lips and crisp white shirt committed in the name of love?
This process of trying to flesh out a history through the use of objects and photos has been a life long habit. I continually encounter new information that re-shapes my view.
My mother and father were once small, once middle aged, and now old. They had a favorite grandma, a best friend, and a childhood pet. They were made and broken by the hardships that love causes. I was part of that. Maybe I was even one of those hardships.
Their information is being lost, dispersed across time and space. They are becoming unrecognizable to me. They are outgrowing my perception. They are becoming ideas. They are becoming memory. I’m committing them to memory because it is the last safe place in which to have something.
Photos and objects are not memories. At best they elicit memory and at worst act as memory. Time is a relentless friend, always begging you to forget. Always whispering “Let it disappear”.
Ronna Nemitz is a Phoenix-based artist whose work examines memory, notions of time, gesture, and autobiography. She received a BFA (1995) from The University of Wyoming and an MFA (2011) from Arizona State University. While studying at Arizona State University, she received the prestigious Martin Wong Foundation Painting Award. Her projects include Listen, a sculptural and sound installation in downtown Scottsdale, commissioned by INFLUX and Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Other projects include Homesickness and Other Endeavors, an installation that renovated the Eric Fischl Gallery into a domestic residence. And, Paper Thin Walls, a projection dominated installation featured at Xavier College Preparatory in Phoenix, AZ. Her most recent project, Amnesia and Other Stories, is a project about memory, which explores the accumulation of sensory memory juxtaposed with gestural or physical memory.
They are strangers to me. I want to know why the boy, aged seven, is so weary? I want to know what casual crimes the woman with full lips and crisp white shirt committed in the name of love?
This process of trying to flesh out a history through the use of objects and photos has been a life long habit. I continually encounter new information that re-shapes my view.
My mother and father were once small, once middle aged, and now old. They had a favorite grandma, a best friend, and a childhood pet. They were made and broken by the hardships that love causes. I was part of that. Maybe I was even one of those hardships.
Their information is being lost, dispersed across time and space. They are becoming unrecognizable to me. They are outgrowing my perception. They are becoming ideas. They are becoming memory. I’m committing them to memory because it is the last safe place in which to have something.
Photos and objects are not memories. At best they elicit memory and at worst act as memory. Time is a relentless friend, always begging you to forget. Always whispering “Let it disappear”.
Ronna Nemitz is a Phoenix-based artist whose work examines memory, notions of time, gesture, and autobiography. She received a BFA (1995) from The University of Wyoming and an MFA (2011) from Arizona State University. While studying at Arizona State University, she received the prestigious Martin Wong Foundation Painting Award. Her projects include Listen, a sculptural and sound installation in downtown Scottsdale, commissioned by INFLUX and Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Other projects include Homesickness and Other Endeavors, an installation that renovated the Eric Fischl Gallery into a domestic residence. And, Paper Thin Walls, a projection dominated installation featured at Xavier College Preparatory in Phoenix, AZ. Her most recent project, Amnesia and Other Stories, is a project about memory, which explores the accumulation of sensory memory juxtaposed with gestural or physical memory.