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Crowded by Your Absence
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- Author(s) / Creator(s)
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Beyond the threshold of the large rolling doors is a gateway - in lies a trove of treasures: cases of can tabs, binders filled with antique coins, and wardrobes crowded with family mementos, hand written archives and obsolete technology. Each item had been deemed precious, meticulously stored to preserve its original, ideal state. But as the dust settles, the burden (and pleasures) of her late father’s storage unit come into focus. How is she going to deal with it all?
Crowded by your Absence is about processing and transforming family archives – simultaneously treasured collections and hoarded trash – to wrestle with the phenomenon of object attachment as a coping mechanism. This body of work explores notions of human attachment to objects that hold both physical and emotional space, and how these occupy memory, identity, and grief. On a much more personal level, through her father’s archive, Deedman questions what objects can tell us about coping with embodied trauma. Positioning the work in conversation with her father’s belongings to explore how one “recognizes the embedded vulnerabilities of memory, inhibition, human existence, the precariousness of home, and the politics of belonging.” Through inherited objects. Navigating both her father’s absence and the surplus of his objects, Deedman explores how these items materialize relationships within domestic spaces. More importantly, considering how they mark endurance, trauma, and coping mechanisms; every collected item is a signifier and a reminder of her father’s addiction and substance abuse. -
- Date created
- 2025-03-01
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- Type of Item
- Research Material