Memory Constructed

Inspired by recorded discussions between myself and four interviewees; I questioned them about their lost loved ones and discussed what they felt was missing from their relationship; then ask them the central question of this project. “If you could have one memory with your lost loved one, what would it be?” I explored unresolved grief, generational trauma and nostalgia as my interviewees all had one fundamental ordeal in common, they experienced a particular type of grief called Ambiguous Loss, coined by Pauline Boss and Janet R Yeats. Ambiguous Loss is a kind of loss that lingers in one’s life due to a lack of closure or resolution, occurring for various reasons such as “physical absence with the psychological presence or psychological absence with a physical presence”. I wanted to help provide a sense of closure, but as this project has developed I discovered that these people have had some part of their childhood ripped away from them due to the generational trauma stemming from their oppressors, which can never be resolved because of the lasting impacts of societal systems that span across generations of families.