Artist Research: Christian Boltanksi

I have taken Inspiration from Christian Boltanski and his exhibition Personnes (2010). This exhibition consists of a grid of 69 rectangular areas filled with second hand clothes, with a 30ft high pile of clothing at the end. Above the pile of clothes is a crane that repeatedly picked up and dropped clothes. Along the wall, rows of rusted biscuit tins were displayed, representing archives of lives. In addition, the space was filled with a continuous sound of recorded human heartbeats, contributing to a cold, industrial atmosphere within the unheated building.

I am taking inspiration from Boltanski in a few different ways. I am representing memory through objects by using a vintage suitcase filled with dried flowers, photographs and old letters. These items act as traces of life, similar to how Boltanski uses clothing to represent absence. The suitcases symbolise ideas such as: travel, displacement, leaving a life behind and loss. In Boltanksi’s Personnes, the pile of clothing suggests mass loss and displacement. Similar to Boltanki’s rusted biscuit tins, my suitcase is like a portable archive of lives.