Karolien Soete

‘Crumpled Memories’ is a part of my ongoing work cycle I call ‘Tempus Fugit’, a multi-discipline exploration of the fleeing of time.

When asking myself, how do I render in physical realms, the non-tangible world of memories?

An unexpected answer arose from way deep inside; all I could see was my mother’s last days, in palliative care. 

She had become a little bundle of flesh, a vulnerable human being seemingly unaware of her surroundings.

Her hands made bizarre repeated movements: folding and releasing her bedsheets, in small clusters, over and over,

gathering and releasing, for hours at a time.

Was she enacting a routine to avoid boredom, like a tiger in a zoo, striding the same path in his small cage?

Or was it like a little child, rocking itself to gain security? 

Answers were in short supply.

Perhaps romantically, to help soothe my pain, I came to see my mother as gathering her memories, for the unknowable journey that awaited. 

Every clustered bedsheet, a new memory.

Collecting and releasing, time and again…

An unconscious movement… one last struggle to physically render the very nature of a life,

perhaps this ‘Crumpled Memory’ is all we can take with us…