Aide-mémoire: Footnotes (Part II)

Barjeel Art Foundation presents the second instalment of aide-mémoire, a show that highlights the multitude of stories that encompass an exhibition.
Aide-mémoire, translates from French as an aid for memory, focuses on the ways in which we see, remember and record personal encounters. Many of the works featured envision different ways stories, whether they are our own or someone else’s, can be recorded and fictionalised through aesthetic creation. Some of these works envision the past, probe the present, while others also contemplate an uncertain future.

Opening in December 2014, the first instalment of Aide-mémoire was in part the beginning of an enquiry where we presented to visitors with a personal request. Pepple write down in notebooks what they saw and how each artwork affected them, or caused them to recall something familiar in their own lives. These notes have left “footnotes”, a multitude of side notes that have included vivid descriptions of works, personal stories, lists of words, books of poetry, drawings and scribbles, as well as empty pages. The notebooks serve as annotation; an aide-mémoire of a past exhibition in a changing gallery space. These footnotes comprise a series of ways viewers, who have set foot in Barjeel Art Foundation, have seen a collection of works.