Unsent
9.4” x 16”
Hand printed postcard and found envelope in laser cut acrylic frame
The back of the postcard features a letter written to my grandmother from my father. The envelope features printed text from my grandfather’s church and handwritten text by my grandmother to me. In light of my grandmother’s ongoing battle with dementia, Unsent aims to encapsulate an intergenerational conversation lost in memory and language. Displayed through the practice of packaging and sending letters, methods of attempted preservation, the various texts and images ‘authored’ and ‘received’ by different members of my family ultimately create a landscape of loss. Engraved in the frame are my partial translations of phrases in my father’s letter. Meant to be viewed from both sides of the frame, Unsent elliptically explores not only the inherent fragility of intergenerational and transnational communication but also the limitations of image and text in preserving memory.
