APSIS (( ABSENCE : ARTPRIZE SUBMISSION / 2025

Nae man can tether time or tide

— Robert Burns // 

Memory fades, must be remembered.
Perishing be?

— Walter De La Mare

Remembering a loved one is an act of respect. Remembering is a lifeline, a connection that transcends the loss of memory, allowing love, dignity, and a sense of continuity to prevail, even in the face of neurological decline. Remembering is a testament to the enduring power of human connection.

The importance of remembering my father, transcends mere sentimentality. In the final years of his life, Parkinson’s related dementia, robbed him of his memories. It was a battle against the relentless tide of forgetting, a fight for the very essence of who he was — a steady unraveling of self. 

For those observing someone lose their memory, it is an agonizing slow watch as the person you love, slips away. It is the heartbreaking experience of witnessing their confusion, their frustration, and their inability to recognize you, to recall shared history, or to participate in the present. It's a kind of grief lived in slow motion. You are simultaneously present in the fading relationship, forced to reconcile the person they once were with the person they are becoming. This sadness is intensified by the knowledge that you will one day recall their memories for both of you and each forgotten detail is a sharp reminder of what has been lost…

APSIS (( ABSENCE represents the continuation of efforts to visualize and express themes of time, loss, metaphysical borders, and the fragility of memory. Within the installation, the triptych, mirrors my father’s own fading presence and is combined with looping, projected videos of ocean tides and lunar phases. The waxing and waning lunar orb denotes the passage of time and the impermanence of memory. Luminous and dense, the moon is a blank projection screen for imaginings, and lost echoes of inner worlds and outer space, summoning the infinite and the intimate. Where elusive memories, reminiscent of the tide’s current, ebb and flow until time erodes each remembrance, like sand beneath the force of a wave.  

APSIS (( ABSENCE is dedicated to my sister, Robin, who fought valiantly to keep my father safe during his final years.