This month I present the creative work of artist Amandine Nabarra who produces unfolding spaces and shares visual stories while living in Southern California.
As artists we frequently exercise our sense of touch to achieve a deeper understanding of an art piece. This is impossible in a gallery environment. After trying to search for more intimacy in her own work, Amandine found her calling — artists’ books — vessels or spaces that reveal a tactile story.
© 2013 Amandine Nabarra. Forgotten, Lost And Found by Amandine Nabarra; edition of 20 numbered and signed
“Each artist’s book needs to be discovered, opened, felt and/or heard. It’s an intimate experience where the reader uncovers his or her own unique relationship with the subject matter”. — Amandine Nabarra
© 2013 Amandine Nabarra. Forgotten, Lost And Found by Amandine Nabarra; pigmented digital prints on Japanese mulberry paper. Housed in a black fabric box with a digital image tipped onto black paper.
We all have a different way to form our book concepts. Amandine starts each book with questions; in her book Tempus Fugit, she asked “Are we resilient as the clouds changing forms and adapting to the weather?”
“Can water be an object and still flow like water?” was answered in the publication, The Bernoulli Equation.
In Forgotten, Lost And Found: “How does it feel to collect our memories or to forget them altogether?” came to mind.
© 2013 Amandine Nabarra. Forgotten, Lost And Found by Amandine Nabarra; a tunnel book in the form of two parallel accordions supported by 6 frame-like panels.
© 1996 Louise Levergneux. My Memories of My Memories (miniature version), chapter 4.
Following Amandine’s information on her latest publication Forgotten, Lost and Found, I was reminded of my very first artists’ book My Memories of My Memories touching a similar subject; the one of childhood memories. I think all types of memories are a subject matter that interests all people.
When I was young my parents divorced and a few years after their breakup I realized I had lost all memories of my early childhood. I don’t know if I had a problem remembering or if it was a response to the traumatic event. Since then, I have been on a quest to understand how memory works.
Contrary to popular belief, we don’t store memories. We reconstruct them, and this process is quite unreliable. With the help of photographs and family anecdotes, I feel I have recovered many these memories but how real are they?
I decided to create an artist’s book that would illustrate three types of memories: the ones we forget completely, the ones we don’t remember, and those we recover. I chose a tunnel book structure and used the three sides, one for each type of memory. The structure offered a story that could be read in any three ways.
The process of forgetting and losing memories was placed on the side of the structure. I captured pictures of people lost in the night, running, walking and trying to find their way. The cold colour tones add to the doubts of the frantic search.
© 2013 Amandine Nabarra. Forgotten, Lost And Found by Amandine Nabarra represents thoughts and feelings, scenes of vivid memories or forgotten experiences. The depth of the book reminds us of the passing of time; 5 inches x 6.5 inches closed; extends to 9 inches
For the inside of the book, I photographed the tunnels along the freeway that linked Italy to France. It was constructed in the mountains or hills and the tunnels were long, extremely long. I am slightly claustrophobic, so it made me nervous driving for hours from one tunnel to the next. Nonetheless, I used warm colour tones to depict them since they lead to a happy memory recovery.
The depth of the tunnel structure represented the time it took to remember and the hurdles we have to go through in order to reconstruct our memories.
I printed my photographs on a Japanese mulberry paper to convey a sense of nostalgia. The long fibers of this paper created a subtle movement. The images looked matte with a little sheen, and it added a slight blurriness, which emphasized the idea of lost or old memories.
The mix of abstract and figurative photographs taken at night was enhanced by the use of colour tones that bind the images together as it expressed feelings of loss or recovery.
In the process, I found the science of memory fascinating. How we encode, store and retrieve information to make decisions is a complex issue. Some memories might help us; some will haunt us for the rest of our life. As for me, I am happy to have recreated my childhood memories even if I will never know if they are “new memories” of my past or if I've remembered them. — Amandine Nabarra
© 2013 Amandine Nabarra. Forgotten, Lost And Found by Amandine Nabarra; inside view
Amandine’s success depends upon finding the proper balance between her intuition and her reason. I hope you will find her out of the box thinking and her vision intoxicating!
Have a great month of March! / Bon mois de mars !