Symantha Jones

Lives and works in Lafayette, LA, USA

Artist statement

I create in the corridors between memories, building connections between moments using abandoned materials, that become part of disjointed structures. Creatures resembling homes teeter and perch among the memorial debris of gathered ephemera. Mazes of walls, windows, and doors dance in fragmented configurations. Light and shadow flicker between drafty hollows. Twisted slats of siding stretch and warp like memories expand and contract. Whispers shiver through overgrown ruins and I wait for each story to be told. There is relief and disappointment in the secrets that remain, those intentionally hidden and those forgotten. My work is about memory, both personal and universal. I construct homes and everyday spaces to define and capture recollections that spontaneously arise as spectral projections upon present reality, in other words, I create haunted homes. Hidden within the universal desire to find a perfect or ideal home, false memories are constructed and made up of an unlikely union of lived memories and the idealized construct of home. The Welsh word “hiræth” describes the melancholic longing for this impossible space. My current creative research delves into this imaginary construction, asking what triggers the memories of home, and exploring the hauntological effect, altering both past and future. Disruptions are created through interactions with my work. The act of remembering fractures memories, each repetition distorting the original recollection, further...

Artwork