A memory, unbidden and without feet, announces itself presently, carrying the compulsions of our prolific world – from renewal and regeneration to repair and restoration contended in acts both big and small – with all our pasts and futures trailing at its heels.For artist Joya Mukerjee Logue, memory is inextricably linked to an understanding of culture. With an Indian father and American mother, Mukerjee Logue’s own mixed heritage sets a stage of curiosity for questions around identity, belonging and connection. Exploring the varied dimensions of her ancestral and cultural roots within the contours of her present-day life in Cincinnati, Ohio, takes Mukerjee Logue on frequent travels back to India, to her father’s hometown of Ambala in Haryana. As they compound, her personal visits become subsumed in collective recall, stretching the practice of memory from preservation to an agile reclamation of shared stories, structures and spaces in and around her ancestral house, home to five generations of family, in a bazaar just off the Grand Trunk Road. These threads of continuity between history and the present yield the site-specific triggers of belonging so essential to the human condition, cogently described by historic preservationist Thompson Mayes as landmarks of identity, in his book titled Why Old Places Matter.
