"Memory is your image of perfection"

I had the chance to visit the MCASD in La Jolla and Downtown San Diego. One exhibition I found particularly interesting was “Memory is your image of perfection”, named after a photograph by Barbara Kruger. The exhibition shows the work of 14 female artisits who have been, in a way, associated with California. Different works and various techniques and resources show the powerful mean of art to express a life statement, an ideology and an opinion about meaningful things like politics, society, feminism, war, leadership, gender differences, the human mind, our ideal of perfection and our intentional use of memory. The temporary exhibition suggests the duality between the purely documentary use of photography and its deliberate manipulation to express a particular and inevitable subjective point of view, arguing that the photographic genres are not as faithful and accurate as before because the bias introduced by the artist’s background, individuality and opinion on things bathes photography in clear subjectivity. Because we capture what we want to remember, but also what we have decided to forget. Think of that. Think of what we pretend to be in a picture, to what extent it communicates our expectations, what will transcend and what will be forgotten, or at least apparently. In other words, what stays in our memory, is our image of perfection. A deliberate creation of our own wills.