Averi Boerboom

Bio

Averi Boerboom’s practice explores memory and nostalgia through printmaking and installation, drawing from her personal experience with her grandmother’s Alzheimer’s disease. As a child, she spent hours in her grandmother’s closet, draping herself in scarves, jewellery, and oversized heels. These moments created a strong sensory memory defined not only by appearance, but by texture, scent, and touch that continues to inform her work.

Her recent body of work named “Alice” focuses on clothing as a carrier of memory. Boerboom alters the garments through a process of soaking, arranging, and photographing the fabrics on a light table before translating them into prints. This approach shifts the focus from the object itself to its transformation, allowing memory to emerge as something fluid.

A key development in this series is her use of fully black prints. She prioritizes emphasizing the textures of lace, mesh, and fabric folds, bringing attention to the physical qualities of the material. This high contrast flattens and abstracts the garments, creating images that feel both familiar and distant. The enlarged scale further draws attention to these details, encouraging close viewing and a tactile awareness of surface.

Her work engages with contemporary practices in material-based abstraction where domestic objects are recontextualized to hold emotional and conceptual weight. Like artists who use fabric and clothing to explore identity and memory, Boerboom positions personal experience within a broader conversation about care, loss, and the passage of time.

Having lived in her grandmother’s home during her decline, Boerboom’s work reflects an understanding of memory as fragile and shifting. By using her grandmother’s clothing within her process, she captures a tension between preservation and disappearance. The work invites viewers to consider their own relationships to remember how certain sensations remain vivid, even as details begin to fade.