mnemonic saliency by Anikke Myers

Issue 119

I was raised in a culture of holy places, of miracles, exorcisms, and dirt & water blessings. It built in me an understanding of the power of landscape to record fragments of the past, both material and spectral.   \   I am fascinated by the idea of a site that holds significance beyond location.   And so I will search endlessly for the places where the streams come together, where strange lights appear in the sky, where rocks are reported to hum, where lives have been created and lost.   \   When I was a child I buried secrets in my backyard, under thick valley soil, overgrown by weeds and flowers. There were secret words I would say before I relinquished them into the ground, these boxes of river stones, moss, broken beads, fossils, sticks that looked like animals. I thought I could return to these treasures whenever I needed them but the maps that I drew never led me back.  \  These  small photographs are the maps that lead back to a point of personal history, to buried treasures of experience, though like my maps of childhood, time and distance have made them inaccurate. These are places haunted by recollections; places where I’ve floated and laughed and bled. They are stand-ins for circumstances to which I can never return and memories altered by recognition.   \

I use these photographs as a platform for catharsis, alteration as deliverance from moments I could just as well move on from.  I use chemical mark-making as a meditation, gestural magic to honor a location of personal significance. My attempts to integrate the moments into a concept of present reality. 

Anikke Myers lives and works in rural Pennsylvania.  
To view more of Anikke’s work, please visit her website.