Deborah Aschheim

“I was the Carolinas Healthcare Artist for fall of 2007. For three months, I worked with memory-impaired patients in the long term assisted living community at Huntersville Oaks. I was interested in the idea of amnesia as a form of time travel: many of these patients had difficulty creating new memories, but they could re-experience their past in a surprisingly direct way, without the interference of knowledge that came later. Residents' family members provided me with old photos that triggered buried memories, and I made drawings from the text of our interviews. It was a profound gift to be allowed to enter the lives of these individuals and their families.”

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Deborah Aschheim holds a BA in Anthropology from Brown University and an MFA from the University of Washington. Recent exhibitions include the Pasadena Museum of California Art, Laumeier Sculpture Park, Saint Louis, MO, "The Lining of Forgetting" at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, and the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, PA. She has been an artist in residence at Illinois State University, at Fundacion Valparaiso in Mojacar, Spain, at Headlands in Marin, California, at Hallwalls in Buffalo, NY, and at the Roswell Museum and Art Center in New Mexico. Deborah Aschheim makes installations based on invisible networks of perception and thought. Her recent work exploring the subject of memory has led her to collaborate with musicians and neuroscientists.


 

Artist Information

Residency Dates Sep 4 — Nov 19 2007

Currently Based Pasadena, CA

Artist’s Website deborahaschheim.com