How to Build a Memory Palace explores personal memories and archives through quilting and textiles. The inspiration for this project comes from a recent discovery of diaries belonging to the artist's great grandmother, chronicling over 50 years of her daily life. Most chronicle her grandmother's everyday life via the weather or daily tasks, stimulating Chang's interest in how we can explore the idea of family and collective memory through written ephemera. The material hints at a nostalgic idea of family and what it can be, but with a shroud of uncertainty regarding what it is.
Sourced from the Toronto Public Library’s photo collection, the images draw from a collective memory which Chang is interested in repurposing and collating. The medium of the quilt is a familiar and often a familial object, encouraging the audience to think about how familial memory can be retrieved. Chang combines the practice of quilting with publicly sourced images to question how the construction of memory is neither truth nor fiction.
