Totality / Steffani Jemison

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. 

The Site of Memory, Toni Morrison, 2025

 Toni Morrison looked at the Mississippi River, whose course had been altered to accommodate the demands of navigation and commerce, as living memory that persists through movement. Water continues to press against the banks that redirect it, carrying the traces of earlier passages into the landscape's present form. Its movement suggests how history may remain active within matter, even where the structures that once organized its passage have changed.

Steffani Jemison navigates this persistence to find an unexpected correspondence in the chemistry of silvered glass. Liquid solutions spread across transparent surfaces, accumulating in deposits, ridges, and irregular formations as the silver develops. The process is difficult to control. Jemison intervenes through drawing, etching, and gestures made while the material is still wet, sometimes blowing across the surface to introduce another movement. The silver carries the traces of its own becoming, gathering successive transformations into a surface whose appearance continues to change with the light.