The Curated Fridge: Chandler Hubbard: Nondum

The Curated Fridge: Chandler Hubbard: Nondum by Aline SmithsonSeptember 1, 2022

©Chander Hubbard, Self Portrait

I selected Chandler Hubbard’s work to feature after choosing the above portrait for The Curated Fridge exhibition. In researching Chandler’s photographs, it sent me down the rabbit hole of his work, specifically, his project, Nondum. I wasn’t expecting to find a “practice of remembrance” about how we connect our familial experiences with food and cooking. Remembrance is an important element in Hubbard’s journey as he works to put together the puzzle of self, after a life-altering concussion from playing football. In Nondum, he approaches the subject of memory from several perspectives: portraits, poetry, recipes, and the action of cooking. All combine to create his own scrapbook of sensory things we carry with us.

Chandler Hubbard is a California based photographer, printmaker, and bookmaker who was born and raised in Salinas, California currently living in San Diego, CA. Hubbard received his BA in visual arts from the University of San Diego in 2015 and his MFA from Maine College of Art in 2021. While playing football for the University of San Diego, he sustained a final concussion in his freshmen season that ended his athletic career, leaving him with permanent brain damage that affects speech, motor skills, and memory retention. The last concussion led him to explore his own memory and how to preserve those people and places that are important to him.

Follow Chandler Hubbard on Instagram: @mrbeardsly

©Chandler Hubbard, Tri Tip

Poem by Chandler Hubbard

©Chandler Hubbard

Nondum

Nondum represents a personal investigation into practices of remembrance, focusing specifically on familial cooking traditions. Told through the lens of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ 1866 poem of the same title, Nondum, this book acts as a memory device for which we revive past events, connecting with those who we are distant from in space as well as time. As an experiment in storytelling, this work captures the habitual cooking traditions of nearby friends as a manifestation of their desire to retain connections with those who are present in this life, as well as those who have moved on to the next.

Nondum book

My work and practice are driven out of the necessity to remember my own life, as well as an interest in how others interact with their memories. With my own memory issues due to frontal lobe damage, my work becomes objects of memory. Photography and printmaking allow me to create a physical archive that acts as a memory bank, capturing the important people and places in my life. These, in turn, become objects of memory that I can refer back to and revisit time and again to solidify those moments that have been stopped in time. I use photography as the catalyst for all my investigations into memory, utilizing its capability to preserve people, places, and events. Printmaking, writing, and bookmaking are a further means to imbue my own intent and emotions on the moments that I have frozen, which all interact to assist in storytelling. I believe that by creating these objects of memory, their stories communicate inscribed signifiers that allow viewers of my work to revive their own memories. – Chandler Hubbard