University: KASK School of Arts, Ghent, Belgium
Course: Master
Year of graduation: 2015
Thesis: Remembering to Forget. A memoir on memory and its relationship to photography
Contact: me[at]paulinemiko[dot]com | website

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Abstract: In 2003, at the age of twelve, I buried a metal box in the garden of a friend. The box contained two photographs and a letter I wrote to my future self. Ten years later, the box was dug out of the ground and its content was revealed. In 2013, I decided to start burying new boxes. So far there are five boxes buried in different places of the world. Each box contains printed photographs, texts and small objects. They all tell a personal, yet fragmented and partly fictional story. I keep track of every buried box in a journal, using pieces of evidence, notes and pictures, names of locations, geographic coordinates and descriptions, in order to be able to find the boxes back in the future, eventually. There is a great chance I might never find these boxes back: they could get lost, be found by others, stolen, destroyed, or I myself could forget about them. These boxes are like memories, only time will tell if they will last. I call this project ‘A Project for Later’ and consider it a constant dialogue between my past, present and future self.

«In 2003, at the age of twelve, I buried a metal box in the garden of a friend. The box contained two photographs and a letter I wrote to my future self. Ten years later, the box was dug out of the ground and its content was revealed. Like ghosts from the past, these buried documents became icons of a lost time.»

«I reused found childhood images taken by my father and cropped out the details on my hands to create almost abstract and colorful images. To me, hands tell a lot from a person, children hands being especially expressive: by holding objects and grabbing things surrounding me, my hands were taking all kinds of childish nger positions on these photographs.»