"In A Lover’s Discourse, Roland Barthes states that absence holds the duality of both void and presence; “absence functions in a single direction, expressed by the one who stays, never by the one who leaves: an always present I is constituted only by confrontation with an always absent you." Whether that you is perceived or in fact known, physically once alive or altogether imagined, The Farewell Gift presents a transgenerational dialogue brimming with potent and speculative imagery, a hymn of veneration for those who came before us, continuing to sing their songs for those quiet enough to listen. It is in these conjectures where the radical potential of memory flourishes, transforming the individual into a collective, transmitting and generating knowledges that remain untethered by earth-bound limitations."
"Serving as an embodied transmission, needlework becomes a method of preserving history that is not reliant on permanence, but on action, touch, and repetition—and even in imperfection, a parallel is drawn toward the ways in which memory is always partial, rewritten, and (re)enacted subjectively. Failure, instead, may then be (re)positioned as an act of devotion, an intentional methodology aware of its ability to resist closure much like memory itself. Presented as an affective archive, this abandoned series converts error into meaning and failure into preservation, honouring the tension between the symbiotic processes of becoming and unmaking."
Publisher:
Year:
May 2025
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Citation:
Beck, Maegan. "Mending Memory: A Fabric of Absence." Needlebound vol. II (2025).
"Mending Memory: A Fabric of Absence"
Essay
May 2025
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