The Garden on 109th

Photo courtesy of Ikechukwu Sharpe.

The Garden on 109th

2025

Images screenprinted on varying Mulberry papers

Poetry by the artist

Appropriated Ecuadorian expressions

Organic inclusions—wasp nest, snake skin

Sewing machine

pvc pipe

Infiltrating Memory

“The house serves as our initial universe and is more than just a space filled with furniture; it is the shell of our consciousness and the cradle of our earliest daydreams.” (Bachelard, Poetics of Space).

With The Garden on 109th (2025),  I encapsulate a life-size replica of the bedroom my family & I lived in when we immigrated to the United States. Four of us lived in this room for a year before my mother was able to afford the entirety of the apartment. I want to capture a specific moment in my memory: the intermittent moment of the room’s vacancy, before a tenant came into the space. I rebelled and practically contracted my cousins to scribble all over the walls of the room. This conflict cost my mother grievance but it was one of the first lessons in the memory bank that resonated with me. I had to paint the entire room back to its original creamy eggshell color.  There were two forms of me when creating this work: my current adult self imbued with my inner-child. In a way, I reclaim this memory in the way I want to perceive it. After some dialogue with my mother about the events that occurred, she mentioned we couldn’t have gotten up high, being kids and all. These were the warped memories I recollected differently, which led me to certain decisions in constructing the Garden.