FOLKLORE of MEMORIES’ FOOTPRINT
August 21 - 24th 2023 | Barker Hanger 3021 Airport Ave Suite 203, Santa Monica, CA 90405
2023. Watercolor, gouache, pencil, charcoal, oil pastel. 10 x 16 feet.
For The Other Art Fair 2023, Los Angeles artist Finnley Kirkman presents Folklore of Memories’ Footprint, a site-specific installation looking back into the experience of home and memory. Kirkman shares, “Borrowing from my own childhood, I consider how the traditions, customs, and stories of my mini-community—both tangible and dreamlike—were passed through me and the space these experiences hold in my being as an adult some distance from home now.”
Folklore of Memories’ Footprint continues the artist’s explorations of passive inheritance and the negotiation of agency through memory. Playfully referencing the ubiquitous Laura Ashley wallpapers of her childhood, Kirkman incorporates watercolor, gouache, pencil, charcoal, and oil pastels to magnify the style of private sketches to an imposing 10-by-16 foot scale. Moving between the various materials to reflect the differing effects of internal and external forces—from self-guided imaginative play to the overheard conversations that you don’t have the context to comprehend as a child—Kirkman further illustrates the complex, interrelated nature of these opposing influences through a pronounced shift in density across the piece. Underscoring the emotional and cultural stakes of the homes we make available, this devolution from dense to sparse reveals how a tenderly cultivated home encourages an inward momentum, allowing one to create a mental container for imagination and selfhood, while a neglectful home makes no space for such stability.
Staging the memory-laden walls of a childhood bedroom viewed from an open fourth wall, she exposes the most intimate qualities of home to reveal not only the way this small window of time impacts the rest of our lives, but our ability to revisit that footprint over time. While originating from the premise that there is little choice over the influences and relationships that affect us in our first homes, Folklore of Memories’ Footprint ultimately lingers on the potential to reclaim agency through memory.
As an extension of the work’s investment in the value of home, each panel of the four-piece wallpaper installation will be sold by square footage relative to the cost of living across the different geographies and decades of the artist’s life: the average cost of living in Los Angeles today (581$), in Los Angeles from 2006–2020 (388.70$), in Puyallup Washington from 1993–2003 (135$), and in Puyallup Washington from 1988–1993 (90$).
ALTERNATIVE TO SQ FT. PRICE, PER PANEL (4x10ft) | 5,000$
PHOTOS: Mason Kuehler
TEXT: Golzar Yousefi