Memories have a weight that can be felt within the body. Though they change over time, fading or shifting, there is often a sense or a tone associated with them when they surface. This is something difficult to name, which I identify as a weight. I am compelled to give that weight a form, to move it out from within my body. My work is an attempt to manifest that sense visually and physically.

I pay attention to the memories that repeatedly surface. The times and places that have the most weight are those where the range of joy, gratitude, revelation, pain and discomfort are the greatest. For me, those emotions occur most frequently within the home, where intimate exchanges transpire.

The work is an abstraction of how I translate the expansive and complex experiences that take place within the home. What is retained from these experiences is reflected back in a series of memory traces that inform our behavior in the context of the next experience. As a result, a pattern emerges which shapes our identity.

Giselle Hicks, 2011