Memory Catcher

Memory Catcher：Lost Objects, Living Archives is a three-part, artist-led workshop series developed as an extension of the exhibition Memory Catcher (March 2026), in response to Safehouse 1, London. Set within the atmosphere of an abandoned building, the project moves beyond simple nostalgia and instead approaches personal experience, emotional residue, and acts of return as materials for investigation.

University of the Arts Doctoral School

Room HH203

272 High Holborn

London WC1V 7EY

Through collective making with paper mâché, textile, and foam clay, the series of three hands-on workshops invites participants to collectively explore how diasporic memories and personal histories can be translated through material processes.

At its core, Memory Catcher understands memory as unstable, partial, and continually rewritten. The workshops open up space for making as a way of tracing embodied memories, while turning what has been abandoned or lost into a site for reflection and re-imagination.

Led by exhibiting artists and doctoral students from University of the Arts London (UAL) and University of the Creative Arts (UCA) — Xinyu Li, Yuanlu Zhang, and Charlotte Yao — the series brings together material practice, storytelling, and research exchange across feminist, queer, and diasporic frameworks. Participants are warmly encouraged to attend all three workshops, as each session builds toward a shared process in which containers, textiles, and remade objects come together as part of a collective Memory Catcher.

All materials will be provided, and no prior skills or knowledge are required to participate. As the workshops engage personal memories, stories, and lived experience, we are committed to creating a respectful, supportive, and confidential space shaped by care, openness, and mutual listening. Participants are welcome to share as much or as little as they feel comfortable with, and different ways of engaging — through making, speaking, listening, quiet reflection, or silence — are equally valued within the space. We also recognise that response may take many forms, and that listening does not always require immediate words.

While memory work can sometimes feel emotionally resonant, the workshops are not intended as spaces for trauma memory processing, therapy, or treatment. Instead, they offer a gentle framework for collective making and reflection, with care for personal boundaries, different modes of participation, and the varied ways memory may be held or expressed. Light snacks and hot and cold drinks will be provided. Please let us know if you have any access requirements or food intolerances.

Time: 2-5pm, Wednesday 15 April, 2026

Host: Xinyu Li

In this workshop, participants will create paper mâché containers in the form of boxes, houses, frames, or other holding structures. Participants are welcome to bring personal paper materials — including drawings, letters, poems, or handwritten notes — to embed into the work, allowing private traces of memory to become part of the container’s surface and structure. These handmade forms act as intimate safehouses for memory, space, and belonging, as well as vessels for the works made in the following workshops.

Time: 2-5pm, Wednesday 22 April, 2026

Host: Yuanlu Zhang

Using a loom and yarn provided on site, participants will create woven textiles shaped by childhood memory. Participants are invited to bring fabric scraps, jewellery, plants, stones, or other objects as archives to weave into the textile. Bringing these intimate fragments together, the workshop explores how personal and gendered memories can be held, interwoven, temporarily assembled into a collective textile, and later separated and carried away again.

Time: 3-6pm, Wednesday 29 April, 2026

Host: Charlotte Yao

In this workshop, participants will use foam clay to remake objects that are personally significant but have disappeared, been lost, or can no longer be retrieved. While making, or after completing their pieces, participants will be invited to share the memories connected to these objects, creating space for personal reflection and exchange. Through hand-moulding absent things back into form, the workshop explores how fragile or overlooked memories can be materialised and affirmed beyond dominant narratives.

Together, the woven textiles and clay objects can be placed inside the paper mâché safehouses made in the first session, forming a Memory Catcher: a temporary safehouse for memory, loss, and personal history.

If you are not a UAL student or staff, you must register the event ahead to have access to the campus.

Questions? Please contact Charlotte Yao at [email protected]

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Host or Publisher Charlotte Yao