Memory in Retrograde is a solo exhibition by Jonathan Durham that explores the relationship between cognitive decline and environmental stress. Using sculpture, video, and sound, Durham draws from his family’s experience with Alzheimer’s disease to reflect on how outside forces – like pollution, synthetic materials, and systems of extraction – can mirror and influence the breakdown of memory. Durham structures the exhibition around four behavioral traits frequently observed in Alzheimer’s patients: Looping, Shadowing, Sundowning, and Pocketing. These behaviors—each witnessed in his mother’s final years—serve as sculptural and conceptual modifiers, shaping how materials and form are repeated, fragmented, and transformed over time.
In the video Sundowning—named for the agitation and disorientation experienced by people with Alzheimer’s and dementia—multiple sunsets filmed across the U.S. gradually give way to the venting flares of petrochemical refineries. Animated with symbols from oil and gas drilling maps, the work connects the shifting light of memory and cognition with the extractive forces that shape our landscapes, suggesting that the vulnerabilities of mind and environment are deeply entangled.
"Anchoring phrases" in dementia communication are short, simple, and reassuring statements that provide comfort, security, and a sense of stability when a person with dementia feels confused or anxious. These phrases help ground the individual in the present moment by responding to their underlying emotions, rather than correcting factual inaccuracies.
Dementia looping is when a person repeatedly asks the same question, tells the same story, or performs the same action because brain changes impair short-term memory, creating confusion, anxiety, or a need for reassurance
Wasp nests and venom are a hot area in Alzheimer's research, not for the nests themselves, but because compounds in the venom, show promise in reducing inflammation, amyloid plaques, and improving memory in test subjects - potentially offering new neuroprotective treatments. In Appalachia where my mother lived, we knocked wasp nests out from under the wheel wells of any car left undriven over the summers.
clockwise from left
"I don't think I have any money at all honey..." 2025
cast polyurethane with translucent pigments
27 x 6 x 19 inches
Axilla (Car bumper with Armpits), 2025
Aqua-resin, fiberglass, metallic powders
74 x 35 x 30 inches
Cleaver/Gamma-Secretase*/Nissan Sentra, 2025
Aqua-resin, fiberglass, PVC
50 x 33 x 78 inches
As my mother's Alzheimer's progressed, money - cash in particular, became an abstract idea. BUT she had to have her black vinyl purse before we left the house. Going out to dinner was always a roll of the dice. Would she eat the food? Did the restaurant have stairs? What would she say out loud in public? My worries mostly. Many times when the bill arrived she would lean over to me and confess in a hushed voice that she didn't have any money in her purse. It was super sweet and sad as were so many everyday things we took for granted and lost.
*Gamma Secretase is a multi-protein complex which is integrated into the cell membrane. The complex cleaves other proteins which pass through the cell membrane, such as the Amyloid Precursor Protein (APP) which gives rise to Amyloid Beta, the major component of amyloid plaques found in the brain of dementia patients. In this sculpture the "membrane" is represented by a sectional cast of a Nissan Sentra car bumper. This is a membrane that I can understand and visualize better than a microscopic cell membrane inside the brain. When the plastic membrane of a car bumper is broken or "cleaved" it sets in motion a cascade of insurance and financial stressors that - for me - stand in as a metaphor for the compounding accumulation of amyloid plaques in the brain which eventually lead to someone losing their mind.
"Mnemonic Objects" are physical items used to trigger memories or aid in recalling information. I've been making versions of this porcupine skull in various scales and materials as a way of recalling a dream. This latest version is sculpted hollow so that the interiors contain impressions of fossils and flammable gas pipe fittings. In my dream, I remember a scene where thousands of beetles morphed into porcupines on top of a mesa while the sun was rising. At first I tried to read symbolism into this scene - beetles = death and transformation, porcupines - a guarded curiosity. Now I just enjoy making different versions of the skull and treating it like an excavation site, carving new iterations of the dream into the present with each sculpture. I replaced the natural teeth of the porcupine with enlarged replicas of my own back three molars so that this is a hybridization of me with the animal. Because I grind my teeth when I sleep, I was thinking that teeth are the fossil records of our dreams. For the exhibition Memory In Retrograde, I included two slightly different versions side by side because many of the works in this exhibition are about looping and repetitive behaviors common to people with memory loss. I see the sculptures sort of like fragmented phrases that are looping but mutating with each repetition. That's how my mother treated language in her final years battling Alzheimer's disease and I was always surprised at how unpredictable and creative it was.
An antique tobacco planter is amplified with looping audio of my cat Julio growling continuously. The growling oscillates from menacing to humorous. In my mother's final year, I left my cat with her and dad because my first apartment in Texas wouldn't allow pets. I often imagined what unknown language transpired between Mom (at the height of her cognitive changes) and Julio - who was a feral kitten when I found him on the streets of Brooklyn. Even while seemingly happy and content, Julio growls, crouches low to the ground and hisses at almost any movement or change that occurs in the space he inhabits.
The tobacco planter belonged to my grandfather who grew tobacco in North Carolina and eventually had to give up the crop due to diminishing federal support and quotas. Mom helped him plant new tobacco plants with this device which allowed for easier hand setting into the soil and less back breaking work.
Aphasia is a language disorder that affects the ability to understand, produce, or use language. It can cause difficulties with speaking, reading, writing, and understanding spoken or written words.
Dementia and aphasia can occur together in certain conditions, such as Alzheimer's disease -the most common cause of dementia.
This sculpture was inspired by activists in Tulsa, OK who were told by a local petrochemical representative to “just bake cookies” to hide the smell of noxious gases the factory was illegally venting into their neighborhood.
solo exhibition: TAF Flagship Tulsa, OK
Foreground: Just Make Cookies, 2021 tractor trailer 5th wheel, custom propane burner, cookie dough, artificial sweeteners
link for Just Make Cookies performance
Video: Bama Boy, 2022 color video and digital animations 8min 31sec
link for Bama Boy video
Performance actions include baking a 45lbs chocolate chip cookie on a tractor trailer 5th wheel coupler so that the smell filled the entire gallery block, dancing with police batons and creating an incense sculpture infused with used motor oil.
performers: Jonathan Durham, Suzanne Kite, Robbie Wing, Zacry Spears
video link
performers: Jonathan Durham, Suzanne Kite, Robbie Wing, Zacry Spears
video link
from left
Propane Amphora, 2023
aqua-resin
20 x 16 x 12 inches
On A Mesa, 2023
color video, 3D animations, AI generated text
13 min loop
Amyloid Dream, 2023
cast aluminum from 3D prints
37 x 28 x 14 inches
Mechanics of Flesh, 2023
aqua-resin
23 x 31 x 18 inches
In this work I sculpted features like a setting sun and spikes inspired by trilobite fossils directly onto a steel propane tank. Then I made rigid sectional casts from the tank and fused them together to form a broken relic. Aqua-resin is a plastic infused gypsum material that has the surface quality of sandstone in its unpainted state.
performance actions included baking a chocolate chip cookie on a tractor trailer 5th wheel coupler, dancing with police batons and creating an incense sculpture infused with used motor oil inside scent diffusers and soaked into blank incense sticks. video performance documentation
installation view *sounds of wolves howling and my mother (who has Alzheimer’s) whispering through an adaptable PVC system connecting the sculptures along the gallery wall. The audio leaks out of breaches in the pipes. video/audio link
installation view *sounds of wolves howling and my mother (who has Alzheimer’s) whispering through an adaptable PVC system connecting the sculptures along the gallery wall. The audio leaks out of breaches in the pipes. video/audio link