Memory Palace

Jacob Lucius Cartwright’s Memory Palace is a monolithic granite structure that explores how we see our evolving layers of memory and identity. Carved from a living block of granite, the piece is defined by negative spaces – archways, facets, passages – a kaleidoscopic intersection of viewpoints and architectural archetypes of humanity. These voids symbolize the thresholds and portals of our collective and individual memories, representing our lineages and relationships to them.

Like a city’s architecture, Cartwright’s work creates space for us to inhabit, allowing for connectivity and growth. It also challenges the traditional concept of memory as a static, internalised repository, and instead proposes an ever-evolving, co-created edifice—dynamic, incomplete, and fluid—much like our thoughts and perceptions as individuals and as a community. With its rough textures softened and polished as if by the rivers of life, the piece feels both evolutionary and ancient, symbolising the continuous process of creation that bridges past and future.