Memory Seed Bombs
Papier maché seed bombs memorializing people lost to memory disorders - an ongoing social practice series by Kasey Smith.
Memory disorders haunt my family.
I’ve spent the last year watching one parent slip towards the event horizon of Alzheimer’s while still archiving the passage of the other from Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. Fighting a losing battle with my own emotions, I’ve struggled with the compounded losses and fears for my own future. How much time can one spend in dark, quiet rooms considering their own genetic fallibility? I am unfortunately on a mission to find out. And in a year marked by collective alienation, my current mindset is unsettling, even by contemporary standards.
Does it have to be this way?
Memory disorders are not rare. With so many families impacted by them, why does it trigger so many of us into silence? For myself, my trauma, shame, anxiety, anger, and deep sadness have amplified my natural tendencies towards self containment. I want to mourn but wearing funeral blacks while she’s still living feels tacky and premature. I want to confront her, denounce her, but know she lacks the capacity to bring me closure for past wrongs. I want to celebrate her but question whether I ever truly knew the person fading before my eyes. I mainly just don’t want this to be happening to her, or to anyone else for that matter. And not knowing the right course of action, not knowing how to do right by the gravitas of the moment, I stay silent.
Why seed bombs?
The Memory Seed Bombs are my attempt to grasp a moment, a memory, and hold onto it. To fight that silence, on both an individual and collective level, by tending a space where surviving family members can feel supported and understood in our losses. An outgrowth of the Urban Camo Seed Bombs and the notions of ephemerality and the unseen/unperceived explored in that series, I asked people, mainly friends, who had lost loved ones to Alzheimer’s or dementia to give me a small food or toiletry item that reminded them of their family member. Candies, gums, drinks, fast food, etc. Then I custom painted those designs onto paper mache seed bombs which I filled with forget-me-not seeds. These seed bombs were then mailed to those friends along with a small care package containing additional seeds, a forget-me-not seed necklace, and instructions for planting.
This is such a small gesture. But it is the best I can make. To remind people that we can grow a better tomorrow from our loss by holding on to our memories and to one another.
This is undoubtedly the most difficult series I have worked on. There is a different sense of responsibility and empathy when I sit down to paint these versus the TifFAUXny Snails, or the FAUXberge Eggs, or the original seed bomb series. Vaguely exhausting, it feels important and necessary nonetheless.
@kaseysmithdesigns I've been painting these memorial seed bombs for a few years now, but until this fall I'd never actually sprouted one. So I ran an experiment on the seed bombs I painted for my own mother and father. Here's how it went. #memoryseedbomb #alzheimersawareness #dementiaawareness #seedbomb #guerillagardening #artistsoftiktok #arttok #artprototype #forgetmenot #momentomori ♬ original sound - Kasey Smith
Memory Seed Bomb Commissions Available
In 2023 this series was featured in the Encyclopedia of Craft Studies (Abridged), edited by Rena Tom. You can read my entry, and the rest of the encyclopedia, on the MACR Papers site.
