Victoria Kitirattragarn
Victoria started as an oil painter but has grown to be a multidisciplinary artist. Inspired by the many passions in her life, she’s created works commentating on great works of literature and investigations of theories in mathematics and science. For her final Senior Thesis project, she has decided to embrace the subtle themes that have reveled itself over the years in her work, and merge the two loves of her life - music and art. Classically trained as a violinist and pianist since the age of three, music has been a substantial part of her life but she has never purposefully incorporated it in her work as she viewed it as an entirely separate part of her life, until she wanted to create work in relation with her future aspirations of becoming an arts conservator. Together these two modes of creation, art and music, address a conversation and contradictory nature about ephemerality and conservation.
Inspired by my personal experiences and aspirations as a classical musician, artist and art conservator, my work explores the complex and multifaceted, sometimes contradictory, relationship of ephemerality as it relates to music and preservation.
Music exists on many planes of existence, physical, emotional, mental and temporal to name a few. Paper and books conservators are responsible for preserving the physical state of music in musical scores which are heavily annotated by musicians. With study and practice, a musical score becomes more loved, covered with symbols, fingerings and words, all to aid the musician in performing the piece in his/her own interpretation. The marks become as important as the notes themselves.
Yet through all this physical change and effort, arguably the most significant plane of existence for music is memory – that is where it truly exists and the only way to preserve it is by learning it, damaging and elevating the scores, the physical plane of music, with every minute spent studying it, and performing it endlessly. In music, as in many other forms of art, the use of the thing, is also its preservation. Music evolves and enviably decays but it is better to be loved to the point of disintegration, rather than to not be loved at all. If it is not learnt, studied, performed and heard, it will eventually be forgotten.