My Playground of Others' Memories

2014 - 2017

 

A collaboration between Photographer/Artist Sigal Ben-David and Artist Les St. Leon.

 

This new body of work entitled ‘My Playground of Others’ Memories’ comprises seven color

photographs shot in medium format. In this new series, created in 2014-2017, we continue to

explore the use of narratives for the construction of past events and attribution of meaning, the

role of memory in the interpretation and reconstruction of history, and their effect on personal

identity, and the political landscape.

 

In creating this new body of work, we drew inspiration from ordinary objects people collect,

such as artificial flowers, porcelain dolls, vintage tools, yarmulkes. Seeking to articulate the

nuances of relations embedded in the relationship between the inanimate objects that surround

us, that we collect and use in our daily lives and their role in forming our memories, while

experimenting with texture, pattern, substance, and arrangements, through which we generate

a dialogue between photography and FineArt, conceptual rigor and playfulness, representation

and abstraction.

 

By composite, and manipulated images of trivial objects De-familiarized of their functional

properties and removed from their larger schemes of meaning, we explore objects as

containing a profusion of meanings, while confronting with the abstract aesthetic structures

that underlie the natural and artificial environments. Rather than creating a traditional storyline

or narrative, this work reveals intricate and enigmatic mise-en-scènes that prompt personal

reflections on memories, and invite the viewers to construct their own narrative.