JUSTIN PEKERA

This exhibition was a very personal experience for me. At the time, I had been going through depression that fueled a need for change. In working myself out of the depression, I found the necessity to acknowledge some key elements of my past by displaying them as a retrospective of the past 30 years. The show was scheduled to open on my 30th birthday as a private viewing held for those that I've shared my life with.

I kept the exhibition contents secret as I worked on putting together ways in which I could exemplify these items importance to me. I wanted to treat them as artifacts since they resembled something that was no longer in existence other than in our memories. The only person I was able to share my intentions with was my good friend and gallery owner for where the show would be, Janel Frey of the Proximity Gallery. These items linked me to the individuals I was leaving them to in a way that only we would have the ability to remember its significance.

I custom built the cases for the larger three dimensional items out of mahogany. For smaller three dimensional items I chose to shadow box the items with a red velvet backing. Polaroids were also included as they were the way I had been documenting my personal time with family and friends.

I exhibited my will that left each item to the individual who shared an experience with me pertaining to that item. I did not share my own stories with people, rather asked that if anyone was curious, they ask the person the item was left too about it.

Since the show was so personal, there was a lot that was kept unsaid. Lots of things were missed and hints I had created went unnoticed. In the end the experience was invaluable.

Artist statement from the Exhibition

"We are born, we live, and then we die. What evidence is there that any of us exist other than our ability to acknowledge each other? There are the objects, images and things that outlast us, but they do not communicate our stories, rather we recognize each other in them.

These are objects and images from my life that represent some of my favorite memories of some of the most important people to me. Every object and every image reminds me of something of the past, and each one reflects people that have made my life the great experience I consider it to be.

I’ve included an excerpt from my Will indicating whom I would like some of these objects to go to so that after my death they retain their significance past the extent of me."

Justin Pekera