IOANA DRAGOMIR

I feel like I’ve been spending a lot of time in bed. My beds have been the sites of different intimacies, and my bed sheets have borne witness to all of it. They are records in and of themselves: it makes sense that after a break up, a common piece of advice is to change the sheets. Get rid of the sheets, and you get rid of the memories they have absorbed like stains.

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Instead of getting rid of my sheets, I chose to spend time documenting them and translating them into objects that act as archives of the small domestic moments they have been privy to. I have done two, but I will soon have three: one for each of the women’s homes I have lived in (my grandmother’s, whose hands were soft and warm; my mother’s, who raised me; and my own). My documentation of the objects on my bedside table (Everything on my Bedside Table) acts as a still life to accompany this work. Like Tracey Emin did with My Bed, I turn my most private space into a public archive.

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The works are an attempt to get closer to the small moments that make up my lived experience. Through time-intensive processes like embroidery, copper printing, and drawing, I have tried to elevate my involvement with these objects from the routine to the ritualistic.