Ioanna Spentzou

[en-gram] noun
a presumed encoding in neural tissue that provides a physical basis for the persistence of memory; a memory trace.

In the photographic series Engrams, personal memory is explored through traces. The work combines anonymous photographs found in public spaces with contemporary images drawn from the photographer’s personal archive, creating a dialogue between past and present.

Female figures appear as fragmented presences, suspended between the anonymous and the personal. Found images of objects are transformed into symbols of identification, while the women depicted shift from unidentified to familiar within “fragmentary scenes” of experience that persist beyond time.

The archive is given new form, and the present opens a space for the past to be retold, and vice versa. What unfolds is an inner journey of coming of age and a process of self-discovery, shaped through passages, distances, and small yet persistent traces of memory.