Becoming of Memory
The Art Academy , 2025

The exhibition Becoming of Memory explores the dual dimensions of memory. The first is Ars Memoriae, the ancient art of memory—systematic strategies developed by humans to resist forgetting, constructing vivid and structured memory systems through imagery, order, and spatial association. The second is Vis Memoriae, referring to the force of memory—its irrational, affective, and bodily nature, where memory resurfaces, lingers, and transforms through trauma, emotion, and sensory experience, continually generating new meanings.

This exhibition not only revisits humanity’s deliberate attempts to systematise memory but also examines forms of memory that lie outside of such frameworks—through embodied experience, cultural transmission, and emotional evocation. The participating artists, many of whom have Asian cultural backgrounds and long-standing practices in cross-cultural contexts, present works that reflect a state of “postmemory”: memories not directly lived but inherited indirectly through oral histories, family narratives, and visual archives. These memories are activated through intergenerational dissonance and resonance, reshaping contemporary identity and visual language.