Creating and keeping memories as a contemporary art practice: The construction of memory

In this study, titled "Creating and Keeping Memories as a Contemporary Art Practice: The Construction of Memory", the role of memory in human's search for meaning, existence and constructing an identity for self is examined. A person adds meaning to life with the act of remembering and recreates the moments in memory, which are formed through experiences, now. The continuity of the past preserves its existence in terms of remembering and forgetting, and the act of remembering is provided by triggers such as an object, taste or smell. Studies on memory have emerged as a result of the contradictions of the modern period. Contrary to the humanist understanding of modernism, as a result of the world wars and the Holocaust, confidence in modernism has been shaken. The structure of modernism focused only on the new by ignoring the past has revealed that postmodernism, which developed as a reaction to the modern, presents the past elements in an eclectic manner. In this research, the artistic practices presented by the artist, who desires to reconstruct the past, through objects and space, which trigger remembering, were examined. The applied contemporary works of art are a part of the artist's life. Every personal and social image of the past revealed is the trace of the artist's own memory.