Pia Georgette Bertola

I am a French American multimedia production artist working between Paris and Boston. My thesis project, Not even a ponytail, is an experimental exploration of memory and how it fragments, shifts, and forms through emotion and sensory experience rather than chronological time. My work takes the shape of two interwoven video pieces: one capturing the natural open landscape of the ocean as I remember it from childhood and the other moving through the dense industrial textures I recall from my early adulthood in the city. These contrasting environments are visual metaphors for different stages of identity and memory and the way the emotional resonance of a place can override its physical reality. I was especially interested in the way memory layers itself and the fact that it’s never a single moment but a buildup of impressions, feelings, and physical sensations. To mirror that idea, I project the videos onto suspended sheets of tulle and cotton, creating a physical layering of images and shadows. The fabric acts like a veil or filter, both revealing and obscuring, echoing the way memories are never entirely fixed or fully seen.