"What the Linen Holds" explores memory as something that is ultimately elusive. The piece centres around kompot - a traditional Polish fruit drink made through slow domestic labour, that became both the subject and the material of my work. Once a seasonal ritual rooted in care, time and locality, it has increasingly been replaced by industrial synthetic substitutes. Its disappearance in homes mirrors a broader loss of embodied knowledge and intergenerational memory at large.

Situated at a dinner table, a site of exchange, the cloth absorbs spills, rings, and traces of presence, becoming my working surface as a storyteller. Using an inherited linen tablecloth, the work excavates these marks and expands them further into a presented guide for kompot-making.

Learning the process from my grandma, I captured the steps and transferred them onto the fabric using cyanotype. The resulting images are deliberately indistinct. This visual uncertainty reflects how knowledge is passed down, no longer complete but rather fragmented, half-remembered gestures. These acts are then intertwined with in-between moments as smaller spillages. Through bleaching and applying extracted cherry tannins, the visuals appear faded, representing that of a true kompot spill as well as an aged analogue photograph.

Arranged in a circular layout inspired by the logic of Polish embroidery, where repetition, seasonality and labour structure meaning, the images form a closed loop rather than a linear narrative. The cloth becomes a document and a living surface, enacting its central gesture: to resist forgetting by allowing memory to stay embodied and displayed.