Hettie Inniss
"I base my paintings on involuntary memories; ones typically triggered by the senses. Smell is a particularly powerful sense that triggers these unexpected moments."
Hettie Inniss via GRIMM, 2023
Hettie Inniss (1999, UK) is a British Carribean artist whose work responds to multisensory influences and bodily experiences, capturing and preserving a moment inflected by scent, light, sound and memory.
‘Unlocking a lost memory – often triggered by a sight, sound or smell – can be intense, like you’ve been whiplashed into a different timeline,’ says Inniss. Her paintings are the experiences of this sort of involuntary memory, solidified into paint. Moments at which our senses are stimulated and the mind takes us to familiar or sinister places. Paint can slip away and fade, assert itself in a work loudly or in an undertone. What does a memory taste like, how does it sound, how can paint record these feelings?
