Marcus Venegas

The Remembering Self

I am a storyteller. As a gay Mexican-American artist, I find myself in a challenging position to share with others the hardships of being queer, specifically when it comes to the subject of romance. My creations are centered around the concept of autobiographical memory and ‘remembering self,’ a term coined by the renowned psychologist Daniel Kahneman. This notion emphasizes how people reflect on past experiences, characterizing them by their peak intensity and their end, while disregarding their duration or average emotions. I apply this psychological concept to my personal trauma involving my love life and my identity as a gay man. By using material symbols such as cigarette ash and charcoal, and by performing the burning of my pieces, I am able to create an emotional motif that is authentic and sincere to my history. The fading softness of each piece alludes to a memory that is either fading out or reemerging, further referencing the impetuous actions that come with youth while highlighting its impermanence. The black-and-white nature of my drawings convey honesty and truth. By including lyrical compositions, I am able to immerse myself in a universe of pictorial poetry and the overall theatrical nature of romance. Collecting these pieces over time results in building accurate archival documentation of the various experiences that not only shaped me into who I am today but also sheds light on the significance of what a queer man experiences in modern times. It is through artistic activism that I have found my purpose.