Roots and Routes is the title of Andrew Andrawes’ [2019] exhibition, a mixed media project that encompasses the main tenets of his work: memory, history, and identity. As is evident in the title, his work explores the relationship between the past and the present through a documentation of a two month trip to his home place of Africa. Fittingly, his approach to technique is parallel to his exploration into history and memory, as he combines analog and digital photographic methods. The process becomes symbolic of his ideology.

The project is both personal and interpersonal. Included in the project are images of his family tree going back nine generations from the year 1683 and scans of stamps that belonged to his grandfather, created in the shape of an envelope. He delves into his family history as a means to understand where he came from, and contemplates how background will play into his future and distinctiveness. While the subject matter displays an eclectic collection of personal images-objects for Andrawes, his intention is to prompt discussion of both our individual and collective histories. What moments are captured in a frame and how do we interpret or interact with this memory? How has technology influenced our look at the past? The answers to these questions are left open-ended and ultimately provoke contemplation

for the viewers.

Andrawes’ art process plays with how the past can be contextualized and reconstructed in a current place in time. A picture can exist across generations but still displays only one moment in history. This idea is analyzed throughout his process. The artist juxtaposes analog image capturing with digital methods of photography. The mix of collaging and combining multiple methods of photography to create one new frame is reflective of his approach to memory and history. The images are fragmented and recomposed in a different order, reflecting the disjointed parts of memory and how events and people are remembered.

BY Ana Borlas-Ivern

Relevant pages 6-8