Presentation Ideas

Presentation Ideas

Once I had the heads made, I had to come up with a way to present them at the end. This proved to be more difficult than I thought because the heads had become so passive and depersonalised that combining them with anything could give them a meaning that I didn't intend to.

I started this process by taking some photos of the heads around where I live, my grandparents' grave, strewn on the grass, and in a nearby lake. I thought, if their placement will inadvertently give them a meaning, I might as well suggest one myself. The idea of life (babies) surrounded by death and decay (gravestones and nature). 

These first pictures were taken on my grandparents grave. I liked the mix of the blank faces staring at me, mixed with the very personal element of the gravestone. As you can see from the dates, I never met my grandparents, and still am unsure of their birthdates. This in itself is quite ironic in my opinion, the site should hold so much meaning, however not knowing much about my grandparents or their lives means going to their grave isn't very emotional to me, at least not as emotional as I feel I should be. 

It's engrained in us that we should hold a lot of emotion and love towards our family members, and I do, but never knowing them prevents me from having the emotions I would have expected to get when visiting their grave. The only real connection I have to my grandparents is of course my father, and my name. Being named after my Grandma (Lizzie Flint), her mother (Lizzie Staples) as well as a few Isabella's on my mums side, is the only thing I can really connect with, as our lives have been so different. 

I decided to focus on the idea around burial, the way we bury our family members when they pass, but also how we bury memories and our past in order to move forwards in our lives. We find ways to cope with our past and our regrets by compartmentalising our thoughts, memories and experiences in order to avoid facing them. Although most of us can recognise that it would be best to face our fears, they can often build up and overwhelm us, so we compartmentalise as a defence mechanism. 

From this idea, I chose to present the baby heads by 'burying' them in different materials. One way I chose to do this was to bury them in scrap fabrics inside a suitcase. This comes from two different but connected ideas, how we carry our memories with us through life, but hiding them away so we don't need to face them straight away. The suitcase represents how everything in our lives stays with us, it becomes our baggage. No matter how much we compartmentalise or push away, our memories and experiences stay with us and shape us. 

We take suitcases with us for most of the important moments in our life. We use them when going on holiday, moving houses, even weekend trips with your friends. They represent the journeys we take in life and stay with us until they fall apart, just for you to buy another and repeat the process. They keep our belongings safe, bringing back souvenirs for us to remember the trips that shape us as human beings. They represent change, growth, but also stability and safety. 

Another option was for me to bury the heads in sand or soil. I focused on sand and soil mostly as sand can represent time and how our lives change and are influenced by our experiences through time. Soil could also show this, but focusing less on how our lives change over time, and more on how our thoughts and memories can become distorted, decaying and breaking down as our memory fails us and we struggle to remember our lives. This idea of decay interested me the most, as memories are such a delicate concept. Our memories can be forgotten after just a few minutes (like how you forget what you ate for breakfast), or they can stick with you for years (like how we can remember or friends favourite flower years after they told us). This inconsistency is what make memories such an interesting topic, we have no control over our memories, however much we try or want to.