Transplanted from the North and raised in the winding suburbs of the South where the illusions of closeness were as abundant as kudzu overtaking the side of the roads and abandoned farm houses. Mostowy juxtaposes traditional methods of mending while subsequently rendering objects useless. Exploring futile notions of memory and perspective rooted within familial despondencies using installation, video, audio and collage in her practice. She received her BFA from the University of Georgia in 2010 and her MFA in Sculpture from Indiana University in 2015. She has shown both nationally and internationally with solo shows in Chicago, Georgia, Indiana and has most recently shown work at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Korea.
Paige Mostowy
Statement
The artifacts of my family’s past were not objects or places, but stories. Constantly fluctuating and passed down from person to person until finally those pieced together histories became truths. My work resides in a space where nostalgia is intertwined with misremembered instances embedded within a persons’ history. By exploring the parallels between phenomenologically based lapses in memory and perception, I question how an individual's history impacts their ability to partake in a consistent present. Reconstituted timelines are created by altering found 8mm film from across the country coupled with audio from different decades and families unrelated. I challenge what memory is or isn’t and further how we recall what once held significance. Collage of found photographs and material from 1930-70s simultaneously suspend the past and alter the present. Rooted within a place of loss and trauma, the collages generate a milieu within their fragmentations of space, time and landscape. These semblances of a whole inflate false realities of mundane moments in a persons memory. Personal ontology isn’t something that appears out of thin air. As perspectives shift over time, circumstance weaves the histories of individuals into a tangled pattern that will never be viewed or retold the same way twice. Every idea, moment, and affect continuously build upon what a person has created or, just as important, chosen to abandon.
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Arts + Literature Laboratory is located at 111 S. Livingston Street #100, Madison, Wisconsin, 53703.
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