This is a series of collage works that show my witnessing and interpretation of my grandma’s descent into dementia, an illness that gradually robs a person of memories, timelines and human connections. Her mind has completely forgotten how time works - old memories become entangled with new ones, gaps in her memory are filled in with imagined scenarios. One moment she is 86, the next moment she is 6. Her world is a deconstruction.
My grandma was a tailor in her younger days. She sewed my first blanket, pillow case and made me dresses as I grew up. My memories of my grandmother will always be entwined and held together with physical memories of thread, fabric and stitching. Before her dementia got worse, she used to remind my mother that her sewing machine should be passed on to me in future. She used to collect some scrap fabrics and buttons for me to play with, and some of these are featured in the artworks.
Collage 1: A Portrait of Dementia
A portrait of my grandma created by combining an old and recent photo, cut up and reconstructed. This represents how she often confuses the past for the present day. She forgets her age and how time has taken its toll on her body. She pulls at her skin, shocked at the wrinkles and age spots that have formed. She often forgets her physical limits, surprised by the frailness of her own body.
Collage 2: The Structure of Dementia
A grid of old photos is held together with stitches in red thread. It begins with old memories, the ones clearer in my grandma’s mind, and in chronological order. These photos show her in spaces that held significant memories, such as her wedding venue, her holiday destinations and her daughters’ homes. This represents the period of her life before the dementia set in. As the grid progresses, the stitches become more and more messy, and the grid begins to lose its structure. Memories and locations start to overlap, breaking the grid. Stitches zig zag back and forth and pull apart at the seams. My grandma now tells us stories that no longer have any sense of chronology, space or connection, and my memories of her begin to get distorted alongside.
Collage 3: Re-weaving my Grandma’s past
This collage is constructed with scraps of thread, fabric and paper woven together. The weaving represents how I am forced to reweave together the stories of my grandmother’s life, based on the scraps and disjointed tales I have been told. There are many ‘loose ends’, that I am not yet able to find a place for, and properly weave back into the story. Thus for now, they remain hanging.
titsay
romaincrisis
snowghoul
janainaart
discoholicmusic
