Fading Memories – Mural by Iman at Prospect Oktyabrya in Ufa, Russia

January 27, 2024

By Vidar

Street Artist Iman

“Fading Memories” by Iman at Prospect Oktyabrya, 16/1 in Ufa, Russia for SUPERNOVA. Photo by Dmitry LIL-DEE.

Iman on his mural: Memory is one of the most important mental properties of a person’s personality. Personal development of a person involves the accumulation of existential experience, which requires the inclusion of all mental processes, including the processes of remembering, storing and reproducing individual memories of the past. As we age, changes in memory occur. The brain erases part of the memories, distortions occur in the events of the past and their sequence. Difficulties arise with a short memory, sometimes it is easier for a person to remember something from his youth than what happened a few moments ago.

The work depicts an old man, birdhouses are attached to his head, as an image of a repository of memories. I depict the memories themselves in the form of birds. Once in all these birdhouses there were many birds, gradually they were empty. One bird sits on the old man’s finger – this is the most vivid memory that is filled with the strongest emotional charge, which is why it survived. These are the stories from the old people’s past that they tell us time after time with a smile on their face.

At work, there are also additional symbols that help you remember. A photograph hangs on one of the birdhouses, several more photographs are drying over the fence, in which fragments of the past are recorded. Also on the hand of the character is a mark with a pen in the form of a cross. Usually people do this so that they don’t forget to do something. The old man is depicted at the moment when he found a cross on his hand, but he can no longer remember what important action he must perform.