A♭ / A♯ — Dahlia (2026)

A♭ / A♯ — Dahlia is part of Memory Garden, an ongoing body of work in which I explore childhood memory through botanical imagery, color, sound, and layered material process. The work is structured around the proximity of two notes — A-flat and A-sharp — which occupy nearly the same sonic space while remaining fundamentally distinct. In my practice, where color and sound are closely linked, this relationship becomes a way of thinking about perception itself: closeness without sameness, resemblance without resolution. The dahlia becomes the vessel through which that tension is made visible. A cyanotype image on silk is embedded beneath multiple translucent layers of acrylic, each gradually built and hand-polished into a reflective surface. Through this process, the floral image is partially submerged within depth, appearing and receding according to light, angle, and distance. The work shifts between opacity and transparency, image and reflection, presence and withdrawal. This instability is central to the piece. Rather than presenting memory as something fixed or fully recoverable, A♭ / A♯ — Dahlia treats it as layered, perceptual, and continuously reconstructed. The flower does not function as a botanical study alone, but as an afterimage: intimate, elusive, and suspended between recognition and disappearance. Through the fusion of cyanotype, silk, and polished acrylic, the work holds memory in a state of visual and emotional resonance.