'Memory is a Verb: Exploring Time and Transience'

From the museum:
Memory is a Verb: Exploring Time and Transience is a new group exhibition to be showcased at the Oceanside Museum of Art reflecting on memory, nostalgia, time, and human identity through the lens of eleven female photographers.

The exhibition is deeply rooted in the profound disruption caused by the pandemic –a period that forced artists from different backgrounds and regions across the country to search within themselves as they embarked on a humbling human journey beautifully captured in photography, video, and interactive installations.

The resulting exhibition will allow visitors to engage in the creative process not only through sight but through sound as well.

Ultimately, the project’s goal is to reflect on how memories are formed, whether they exist as fixed reflections of reality or are subject to transformation over time. The featured artworks suggest that even concepts as universal as memory may change, shift, and re-define themselves as time goes by, and this often happens in provoking, powerful, and unimaginable ways.

Unsurprisingly, the past has its own unique way of infiltrating the present moment and forces all of us to re-examine the nature of our memories. Each art piece featured in this exhibition embarks on its own quest to recall the past–be it through an exploration of gender, discrimination, identity, diversity, patriarchy, violence, love, loss, death, family, or environmental issues– in order to deliver a timeline of events that viewers can reflect on.

But the idea that memory exists in the present moment is something that can also be applied to all the artworks presented. As a cohesive collection of works, the exhibition grounds memory as a vital concept in our fast-moving world."
–Curator Marisa Caichiolo

Participating artists:
Elizabeth Bailey, Annette LeMay Burke, Dena Eber, Sarah Hadley, Diane Hemingway, Susan Lapides, Annie Omens, Lori Ordover, Jennifer Pritchard, Rosalie Rosenthal, and Aline Smithson

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Exhibition information
Memory is a Verb project website