Adam Junior: Keepsakes

Mementos. Keepsakes. Sentimentality, and the use of objects to preserve memory. These are symbols of evolution and transformation. It seems a natural human inclination to collect ‘things,’ if for no other reason than to help us to remember, to reflect on past states of being, and to have something tangible to tether us to experience.

Adam Junior's work has always grappled with past, with what has personally molded, broken and rebuilt the person who exists now. An overarching and significant piece of this work has focused on home—the icon of the house, the concepts and emotions that pull at the contentious relationship between the ideas of ‘house’ and ‘home,’ and the inevitable networks of human connection that sprawl outward from this epicenter like the dendritic patterns that compose suburbia. But as we break free of the constructions that both shackle and shelter us, what is it we take with us?

Humans act much like hermit crabs, moving from house to house as a crab to a new shell. Perhaps the old one had been outgrown, or life’s proclivities have made it necessary to downsize, or maybe a sense of wanderlust provoked nomadic adventure; the houses we inhabit are simply empty shells, and what we build, break and inexorably take with us are the memories along with evidence of personal growth and hardship that occurred in each place. The idea of homes past is very little about the shell of roof and walls and almost entirely about everything that a particular shell was filled with, both material and immaterial. Home is both personal and communal, stationary and completely peripatetic. So, like a quiltwork of tactile memory, one could represent an entire life by building the patterning blanket of keep``1sakes from transient moments of home. Objects, little houses, reminders of what is left behind as we move and grow, placeholders for ephemeral pieces of ourselves that will always be taken with us as we build into an uncharted future.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website