"Mutilated memory" , by Erik Pevernagie, oil on canvas, 130 x100 cm

Our memory consists of bits and pieces which have made their imprint on our lives and our dreams. They have enlightened or darkened the sky and the horizon of our past. It is a mixture of fragments that we don't want to forget or of splinters that we can't obliterate. Our memory is a mutilated phenomenon.

The mind collects the facts, and by recalling, interpreting, or idealizing the different elements from the past, a decline of the actuality takes place. We are dealing then with a mangled factuality, a mutilated memory.

Through dreams and ideas, we are seduced to go back to particular places and times of our past. Those singular moments and spaces of our history receive then very often another color and dimension. Our mind tries, however, to tame and keep in control the phantoms of the past. If not, our memory can become irreversibly maimed.

We can only speak true, talk straight and be outspoken, if we prove to be able to decrypt the veiled elements of the puzzle inside and outside our environment; describe the intricacies of the social constructions and the emotional sensitivities; analyze the feasible contingencies and practical options; arbitrate and come to sensible conclusions; and invent pragmatic proposals and equitable solutions.

Our memory is a biased and partial witness in the course of our life;" our life is only the crepuscular, and no doubt falsified, and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process." (Jorge Luis Borges) .

Some facts that have been smothered by an authoritarian consciousness can revisit through tell-tale symptoms, which disclose the real background of the factual occurrences.

Phenomenon: Mutilated memory

Factual starting point of the painting: Woman looking at picture, in the back picture of man half visible