Beatrice Wolert. Memories are Starting Points

About

Wolert is a first-generation Polish-American mixed-media artist raised in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She taps into her personal history to explore how individual memories and experiences change and develop over time, and in doing so, she invites participants to explore their own connections.

In this unique installation, Wolert is combining her recent and past projects to show how the past is seen and how the future can be envisioned. By utilizing varied materials including tape, mylar, zippers, thread, fabric, cement, clay, carpet tufts, flowers, stones, and photographs, she creates tactile and temporal pieces. Weathered elements and materials such as dirt, unfired clay, rust, and flowers highlight the passage of time. Her photographs and highly textural works examine the fluidity of experience.

By allowing residue from former projects and natural living elements to enter the conversation, a shift happens in the work itself. The ephemeral layers begin to interweave, forming a temporal narrative: bridging earth and sky, memory and tactility, individual and collective.

Memories are not linear, but rather fluid and ever-changing by shared and lived experiences – they can be built upon. This re-contextualization as a whole is the foundation of reenvisioned, new and alternate futures, and the audience has a hand in shaping it.