JULIA REBER                                             work     about
                       

Yia Yia, 2023
    Yia Yia is a collection of photographic works and found objects exploring my grandmother’s life and possessions through the use of fugitive materials. My Yia Yia and I spent a lot of time together when I was a child, but she fell into dementia when I was freshly a teenager. I hold a lot of guilt about our relationship now; questions I never bothered to ask, a curiosity that came too late. Trying to navigate through her belongings, secondhand memories from my family members, and my childhood memories now has been both a cathartic and frustrating experience. My grandmother rented her whole life, causing the loss of a lot of her possessions. It seems as though her possessions and our memories are in fragments, missing whole chunks of time from her life. I’d imagine this is what her mind felt like dealing with dementia, too– time unaccounted for.
    Yia Yia investigates what possessions and memories of her remain, and how dementia and life as a renter influenced this partial loss of archives. It allows me to continue to learn about her even after losing her. Through the use of impermanent materials, I depict the change, dilution, and absence of memories. The notion of creating permanent archives through photography is shifted by using these ephemeral materials. It surrenders the immortality of the image and shows memory’s mutilation through time.
 

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