Mark Allen Soderstrom

Re(a)semblance

Our family histories are constructed of memories and personal artifacts woven into a quilt of understanding, unique to each and every one of us.

 

My mother is the only child of immigrant parents, both of whom have now passed on. My father is the only surviving child of parents whose previous three generations each took a leg of the cross-continental journey after emigrating from Sweden. My distant family ties have been severed and what I know of past generations has been largely lost to time, relocation, and fading memories.

 

The genesis of this series is an old box of family photos and correspondence my father presented to me two years previous. I didn't know who the people in these photographs were, who wrote the letters, or if we were truly related. Nor did my father share any information regarding this. It’s difficult to simply discard such artifacts, but without the historical knowledge of social and family ties, where is the value of retaining them?

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These constructions are tangible meditations on those thoughts. They weave together aesthetic swatches of what I believe, or would like to believe, my history to be. Photographs are threaded together with antiquated messages, patched with bits of paper, and designed by intuition. Like most of human history, what they reflect is a piecemeal understanding of my own heritage.