Abby Kettner

In Place of You - Second Iteration

As "In Place of You" looks to locate where the objects and memories are situated in time and space, the work takes on new meaning and form with every installation. Inspired by research from various artists and writers, including but not limited to Eva Hesse, Jean Baudrillard, Do Ho Suh, Timothy Morton, and Jane Bennett, the work is entrenched in the discourse of how objects can become an extension of the self. Moving through the concepts of loss, reification, the Uncanny, and Object-Oriented Ontologies, In Place of You wrestles with what it means to preserve something that is ever-changing.

“As Kettner puts it, compounding recollections make the memories “blurrier and blurrier.” Every time you recall a memory, you also remember the last time you remembered it, like a game of broken telephone. “Nothing you are ever recalling is something that you can depend on as absolute truth, or as truth at all.” It becomes understandable then why objects become evocative for people. Kettner explains, “The objects themselves are tangible but what we are trying to put in them is intangible. We try and hold things outside of ourselves that are painful and big. Memories and experiences and feelings, objects become vessels for those things.” Our existence is brief, and all our experiences on this earth are emotionally and physically intangible. "In Place of You" captures that in ghostly poetic fragility. It mourns the passage of time and our inability to hold on. -Andria Keen ”