Alexandra Larrabure
Material Memories
Material Memories explores the construction of memory and identity in relation to materiality through a collage-like autobiographical narrative. I have attempted to create an introspective and personal project that reflects upon my identity in a personal, as well as a collective and cultural level. My approach to the family album and archive, as well as to the objects that I have gathered in my wanderings around Lima, my hometown, hopes to highlight how materialities tell a story of their own, and are configured through entanglements of cultural, historical, social and emotional meanings. I have knitted my family’s memories and temporalities, engaging in an ongoing process of defamiliarization and refamiliarization which understands memory as a construction based on ever-changing patterns and textures.
Reflecting on the montaged qualities of memory the collection plays with contrasts and juxtapositions. The colour palette experiments both with neutral and bright colours, which come from the idea of seeing Lima from a multiplicity of perspectives, those of the streets and the more intimate ones of the family home. The yarn selection combines natural fibres such as silk, with synthetic ones like monofilament. Similarly, the wide choice of techniques ranges from beading to hand-machine knitting, as well as finishing techniques like hand painted devore and clamp dyeing, in order to achieve an aesthetics dwelling between the worn out qualities of the past and the vibrant materialities of the urban present.