The landscape of memory has shifted dramatically over the course of the Digital Age, marked by the ease and speed at which we can record, store, and share information. Through digital technologies, almost anyone can participate in the production of memory at any time. Yet the ever-growing digital archive has substantial financial and ecological impacts that we must address.

Encode/Store/Retrieve draws together artworks primarily from SJMA’s collection to explore low-tech forms of memory production from the past sixty years. The sculptures, paintings, photographs, installations, and works on paper brought together here are organized into thematic groupings that reference the key processes underlying cognitive and computational models of memory—encoding, storage, and retrieval. Bridging conversations about digital, biological, institutional, and ecological memory, the artists in this exhibition provide us strategies to grapple with the emerging issues of our growing digital archive.

Featured artists include Wallace Berman, Val Britton, Jim Campbell, Enrique Chagoya, Chryssa, Binh Danh, Steven Deo, Bruce Hasson, Xandra Ibarra, Dinh Q. Lê, Darlene Nguyen-Ely, Margaret Nielsen, Harold Paris, Beverly Rayner, Analia Saban, Katherine Sherwood, Rose B. Simpson, Inez Storer, Stephanie Syjuco, Stella Waitzkin, Xiaoze Xie, and more.