Memories in Decay - Michelle Muzyka

From Memories in Decay:

Due to the change in the global climate, there have been an increasing number of natural catastrophes. Many buildings become vacant in the aftermath of a cataclysmic event. Given an opportunity, nature will try to restore a balance within an ecosystem offset by man-made damage. Organisms help deconstruct and reclaim the remnants of human artifacts fueled by the presence of water that is an inevitable result from such disasters. Memories In Decay presents an allegory of this decomposition process. It is an installation representing an artificial species composed of manually and digitally cut paper colonizing an abandoned interior space. The positive and negative shapes take on the form of an entity aiding in this decomposition, which comes to life as it slowly creeps in to fill in cracks and crevices much like the analogs in nature. The deserted room becomes inhabited again with proliferations by bringing the outdoors into the interior. This paper fungus is continually self-replicating to build an intricately woven mass. New spores of smaller paper populate the edges of the sculpture as the being reproduces over time and extends the life of the species.