Esmée Dobai Desjardin

As a paper scrap passes from hand to hand, damage accumulates; tears and scratches, coffee stains and grease marks. These objects are nostalgic and slightly perverse, enjoyable and shameful in equal measure, all about tactility and wanting something from a lost past so very badly. Trashy bits of memorabilia, some of which may be destined to become revered and desired, by those who value and yearn to be part of these histories. Its aura develops with every trace of its handling but also with every reproduction, or reference to it, impossible to throw away. The cultural icon and the ephemera that surrounds form a parasitical feedback loop where each feeds off the other, amplifying until a circling myth surrounds both.

The work is a grappling with my own tendencies of avaricious, gluttonous, indulgent hoarding. An infinite supply of paper matter that sticks to me and accumulates in my wallet, my pockets, in my drawers and under my bed. These printed matter morsels are remade, screenprinted onto metal. A material more hardy than paper, but a print which scratches off easily.