Petra Soesemann earned her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has completed artist residencies at the Lucid Art Foundation in California, the Fundación Valparaíso in Spain, and RAiR in New Mexico.
Soesemann’s work explores how perception, memory, and awareness interact through material and form. She writes, “My recent work explores textile surfaces that both obscure and reveal. Fabric constructions often incorporate translucent and opaque areas that bring perception into conflict with expectation and uncertainty, and engage the basic processes of mind seeking meaning as a process of consciousness.”
Her recent installations draw inspiration from the ancient concept of the memory palace—an imagined architectural space used to organize and recall ideas. “The concept of the memory palace intrigues me on several levels,” Soesemann notes, “the nature of visualization and spatial thinking; the linking of abstract concept to image; visual forms that mediate between the universal and the particular; and how the nuances of present experience reframe memory.”
Many of her works are conceived as parts of one evolving installation that, as she describes, “will never be seen in its entirety because the memory palace is perpetually in progress: projected, dismantled, and then conjured again through a changing assemblage of artifacts.”
Through this ongoing process, Soesemann invites viewers to reflect on how memory, perception, and experience are constantly being reconstructed through time and attention.
