HANNAH LATHAM

Part of my thesis exhibition at RISD, this body of work is a series of eight cyanotype placemats made from digital collages using photographs, documents, and objects from my maternal family archive. Each placemat represents a decade of my grandparents’ lives, starting with their childhood in Hungary, immigration to the United States, leading up until today. Newspaper clippings, patches, my Granny’s wedding veil, family photographs, and love letters overlap to highlight the main familial events from each time period. The collages were then exposed onto fabric treated with a cyanotype emulsion and surrounded by a border of machine-stitched motifs from traditional Hungarian embroidery. Telling a personal narrative of the American dream, this series aims to connect the nostalgia of one’s cultural identity with the food on their plate and their loved ones sitting around the table with them.