Unclutter Memory

Unclutter Memory (2007) by Berend Strik addresses the concept of memory management — the attempt to organize, simplify, or free one's mind from the accumulated clutter of experience.

Strik frequently works with found photographs and family album images, which are themselves records of memory. The act of adding textile interventions to these images can be seen as both cluttering and clarifying — adding material that both obscures and reveals the underlying image.

To "unclutter" memory would be to see it fresh, as it was when originally recorded. Yet Strik's additions are about adding new layers of meaning, not removing old ones. The tension between cluttering and uncluttering, between adding and subtracting, is central to his practice.

Sources: Galerie Fons Welters