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Two memories of one mother's death, room 3
Years of the entire project implementation: process started in 2019 - completed in 2024

One of the five olfactory installations made of handmade paper with different scents and materials associated with specific memories and rituals, which co-exists with books and video.

ROOM 3

Scent of flowers

Handmade paper installation consisting of 2 objects, 49 pages
dimensions of objects: 300 x 150 cm; 300 x 140 cm
size of a single page: 42 x 29,7 cm
material: Chinese peonies, Marguerite flowers (Leucanthemum vulgare), chrysanthemums, roses, Madonna lilies from discarded bouquets, family home garden and from flower petals collected for scattering during processions
technique: handmade paper, own technique


Barbara Mydlak’s project Two memories of one mother’s death experimentally investigates the removal and modification of traumatic memories
by retrieval, reconstruction of events and conscious repetition of them, referring to cognitive psychology research on the reconsolidation of memories.

In addition to the two-volume dissertation, which presents both scientific and poetic perspectives, Mydlak created five handmade paper installations.
These installations were designed for specific places for her family home, the layout of which is featured on the cover of the five small books that accompany the thesis.

The semi-transparent handmade paper objects take the form of curtains constructed from a total of 2,000 one-of-a-kind pages of different sizes.
Each curtain is made from specific materials associated with memories of a particular space: herbal mixtures, flowers, pine needles, burnt books mixed with candle wax, and mourning clothes, all having the intense scents to trigger recollections.

Curtains, symbolically, exist ‘in between’ on the boundary of worlds – separating ‘the living’ from ‘the dead’,
‘the past’ from ‘the present’, ‘here’ and ‘there’ and are giving the special meaning to the spaces they divide.
They can conceal an ‘alternate reality’, hide secrets, create intimacy and are crucial in theater for separating the ‘fictional’ from ‘the real’,
as well as the stage from the audience. They serve a technical role by marking ‘the beginning’ and ‘end’ of spectacle.
By lifting the curtain, the audience becomes observers or active participants in the event.

These ‘large-scale books’ have been written
without words but with the nature of hydrogen bonds,
while guiding the process through hand gesture,
water flow, and physical interactions.

You can read them once
the light exposes their fibrous skeleton.

Having natural, light-sensitive pigments in their fibers,
they act as photographic membranes
that record the light and traces of the windows’ shapes.
These objects are ephemeral and slowly decaying.


The installation is part of Barbara Mydlak’s PhD completed at the Faculty of Painting and Drawing, Abakanowicz University of Fine Arts in Poznan, Poland
Public defence of the doctorate: 28.06.2024, Jesuits' Gallery, Poznan, Poland
Dissertation Promoter: Prof. dr hab. Anna Goebel