Between Memory and History 2006

Navjot Altaf made this installation, Between Memory and History, with mixed media. It's not exactly painting, but it has a painterly sensibility. The piece is a whole environment, not just a picture. I imagine Navjot thinking about what it means to create a space, a world. There's a bed-like structure, a film, and a wall made of what looks like organic material - fibers or sticks maybe? It’s textural and tactile. It’s almost like she’s building a memory palace. I think about how the wall echoes landscape, like a ghostly forest. The piece is clearly about memory and history, but it also feels very present, immediate. Like we are stepping into someone’s dream. The cube-like structure of the bed frame and the rectangular modules in the wall offer a sense of order, while the organic materials and ghostly images suggest something more chaotic, more emotional. Like memory itself, the piece sits somewhere between clarity and ambiguity, inviting us to reflect on our own relationship to the past.