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The exhibition "MEMORY", had a total eight months at the San Francisco Exploratorium (the Museum of Science, Art, and Human Perception). A work of great interest was that in the individual experience and cultural background of the creators have significant meaning in terms of the subject of the installation.
A smaller version of the "Memory Exhibition" is now on tour to different Science Centers and museums across the nation. (Please Exhibition Calendar on the Project page).
"Body memory wasn't the only thing that artist Paul Kwan had to relearn after suffering a debilitating stroke. He could not remember his identity or his past.
The mixed media installation tells the story of Paul Kwan's illness with a mix of brain scans, photographs, video and a book of Kwan's poems and collages dealing with identity and memory. "Cooking brought back a sense of myself, says Kwan, who lost the use of his right hand but is happy to be "still alive, still walking". He is inviting people to take in walk in his brain, metaphorically speaking.
"Paul connection to food, his love of food and the culture of food became something that helped save his memory," Iger says. "He could hardly walk, and he started to cook. He was totally confused; he couldn't get his timing right. But through perseverance, he began to make things, his memory came back---his tactile memory, his memory of smells and tastes."
Smell, says biologist Sitara Cave, "is such a strong evoker of memory. One of the postulates is that it's because the olfactory bulb is very close the emotional and memory area of the brain."
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