My therapist is saying that the main reason of my depression is a nostalgic feeling about home and memories around it. I was surprised it took her so long to figure this out. Home is my biggest pain I can’t handle. The transition between kitchen to my room, the bathroom’s mirror where I see sleepy mom, kitchen full of ciggaregte ashes, balcony where I played video games all day. And most importantly – all these small things like posters, videocassettes, journals, books etc. Am I supposed to forget about all of this given it’s disappeared from the world ? I’m not sure it’s possible to be happy about it.
I figured this is exactly what Do Ho Suh felt while making rubbings of the houses he had left behind. A feeling most of us have by simply losing our past environments in the transition: childhood room > adult room > first apartment > second apartment > own house and it goes. The life keeps moving forward while those small things from past spaces are fading.
The problem (read – pain) is that I wish I could return to those places, smell it, feel the silence around it, toys or written notes. I would give everything to be back from where I am now, for a moment. I miss it so much sometimes that it feels like wanting to live life backwards more important than anything.
An artist who works with memory, space, and the nostalgia through material will always find people who can relate to it. Seems like obvious topic? Every human carries a strange and often painful relationship with these things. Something you don’t have to talk about it with therapist, as it is too subtle to explain and too narrow to dive deep. I barely talk to anyone about my childhood room – why would anyone care?
The question Suh seems to ask is simple, even brutal:
How do we make memory stay through the spaces that absorbed our lives?
And he goes, recreating places. Pencil against surface, rubbing again and again. Recreating the home step by step.
“The experience of leaving home is what made me think and become aware of the notion of home for the first time,” Suh said
Leaving home is my own trauma. That is why his works feel so personal. It reminds – points back to something already lost.
Home is not a place you visit again. It is something you try to hold before it disappears.
