Kathy Lovas | Conversation Pieces: Short Stories from Long-term Memories

The installation Conversation Pieces: Short Stories from Long-Term Memory confronted issues of aging, memory and photographic truth in a unique and provocative way. Through a combination of photographs, furniture, and books created by Lovas, the viewer engaged with the recollections and concerns of an ailing woman whose eyesight and short-term memory have faded.

Lurking in the cheerful snapshots and adolescent’s diary entries were portentous details. Conversation Pieces was based on conversations between the artist and her mother in the final years of her mother’s life. Lovas observed: “We can look at history, but we can’t look ahead. Viewers will someday look back at us in the same way in which we are looking back at the people in these photographs and stories.”