Chronotope is a literary term used to describe the link between time and space in language. In my cut-paper installation by the same name, I explore the interconnection between time and space in memory. Chronotope looks to my own memory – to some of the most poignant moments in my past, to memories that reside at a preverbal level, retrieved only as fleeting glimpses. Without verbal recall, corroboration by others, or a place in the linear narrative of my life, these memories appear unpredictably in my consciousness. Powerful yet elusive, they seem to fuse past and present, time and space.
To organize marks and construct space in the hanging paper sheets of Chronotope, I turn to these memories. I seek to evoke the emotion and psychological state associated with them and the lucid yet dreamlike awareness that marked the moments in which they were born. Through the progression, repetition, and layering of passages of cut marks, I create spaces that appear to crystallize on the verge of dissolving, suggesting the persistent yet slippery quality of memory.