AK’s Personal Collection: “Who I am as an Art Collector”
As I stood in my office unrolling paintings and prints that once adorned the walls of my Paris apartment, stories leapt to life within me that had been long forgotten. The artworks had been rolled up like scrolls for 3 years, quietly waiting to have light and eyes upon them once more.
In those 3 years, I had travelled to more than 20 countries, settled into life in the United States, and gained a new life role as a Mother. So much had changed, and yet when I opened up those artworks, I stepped back into another mindset– the youthful glee and optimism of a younger version of myself. How fascinating that in seeing those paintings again, I saw myself again. Like slipping back into an old pair of shoes, for a moment I was once more that Parisian woman who used to look at and love those artworks every day. The art pieces had held and brought back to me a piece of myself.
Those paintings, prints and the odd small sculptures line the walls of my office today because the walls of my home are already filled with my favorite pieces. In my home are the ones that tell the story of who I am today. They tell the story of my family… The African works represent the time and space where my husband and I met in Malawi. The Italian landscape recalls our wedding in Sicily. The Kashmiri Kilim weaves in memories of our many months in India, where we first learned that we’d be having a daughter.
The art in my home echoes and holds the cornerstones of my life. It upholds the memories, experiences and values that I consider vital to come back to every single day.
Despite no longer standing in the prized position of being hung on the wall, each artwork in my collection holds a part of myself that I appreciate and love. I look forward to the day when they’ll circle back around, catching my attention once more. They’ll be all the more interesting hung beside and in dialogue with pieces from different stages of my life. Or maybe my daughter, grown up and with her own vision of the world, will gravitate to one of the artworks that I also loved in my youth.
Whatever may come of them, I know that as much as they hold pieces of who I am, the artworks in my collection have a life of their own.
* TOP IMAGE: Axel Vervoordt Gallery
