Memory As Archive, Echo, and Evocation

October 3-22, 2025

Opening reception October 10, 5-7pm

Memory As Archive, Echo, and Evocation forms the thematic locus of this year’s annual third-year collaboration exhibition at Maine College of Art & Design. Developed from individual mind maps in which students articulated the formal and conceptual concerns of their practices, the theme reflects both a shared interest in memory and its multiple modalities of presence in art.

Memory, in this framework, operates as echo, a reverberation that lingers, shifting in tone and intensity as it is recalled or re-imagined. It is also an archive, a structure of preservation and classification, where fragments of the past are collected, ordered, and reinterpreted through artistic form. Finally, it is evocation, a calling forth of what is absent, forgotten, or ephemeral, granting visibility to that which resists documentation.

Through this lens, the collaborative works presented in Co-Lab investigate how memory is materialized, abstracted, and reconfigured in collective practice. Students engaged in negotiation and synthesis, weaving together their distinct approaches into works that activate memory not as a static record but as a living process. The resulting projects reflect the generative possibilities of collaboration, where individual voices resonate within a shared structure, amplifying the very echoes, archives, and evocations that underpin the exhibition.

Presented in conjunction with the Third Year Seminar course, Co-Lab situates collaboration as both a pedagogical strategy and an artistic methodology, foregrounding memory as a connective tissue between diverse practices and as a vital force within contemporary art discourse.