fragmented memories

“Fragmented Memories” is a meditation on the archaeology of knowledge, where scientific diagrams are transformed into their own archaeological artifacts. Taking Prof. Degryse’s academic papers as raw material, the artist performs an act of temporal alchemy - extracting microscopic imagery and data visualizations, only to transmute them into enigmatic ceramic engravings that mirror the very archaeological finds they once sought to explain.

The resulting pieces employ ancient ceramic techniques - sgraffito, sigilé, and smoke-firing - but with a contemporary twist. The scientific papers that once held these diagrams are ritualistically burned to smoke the ceramics, creating a circle of academic transubstantiation. These tiles, with their ghostly engravings and cryptic patterns, hover in an uncertain temporal space - simultaneously ancient and modern, meaningful and meaningless, scholarly and mystical.

What emerges is a subtle critique of archaeological interpretation itself. Like fragments of some indecipherable scientific liturgy, these pieces challenge our assumptions about knowledge transmission and cultural legibility. They pose a question: when stripped of their academic context, what separates a scientific diagram from an arcane symbol? The work suggests that perhaps all artifacts - whether from the distant past or our data-driven present - are equally mysterious without their surrounding web of cultural context.

With the help of the ceramic artist Lena Babinet.