After six years of working as a nurse, the pandemic started.
It was a confusing and fearful time where my colleagues and I fought every day towards the unknown.
At the time I was working in a dementia ward in Edinburgh, far away from my family in Spain, who are health workers too.
My studies in photography stopped, my day a day stopped, and all I was doing was fighting.
For a year and a half, we kept like this. And when the last summer I could finally relax at home, I felt all the pressure accumulated coming to me.
I felt blue and anxious. I didn't want to leave the bed due to a strange weakness. I had depression with PTSD.
And like this, I arrived in London to study for my second year at the Royal College.
Thanks to my tutor Edward, I realized I need it to explore these feelings. So I did it.
Using the words of my diaries at the time of the pandemic as a brush, I paste different texts one over the other until they became illegible. Because I wanted to forget.
I create forms using my words, forms similar to X-Rays because I was trying to look inside of myself.
I chose to use only colours from the nurses' uniforms in the UK because this project is for all of them. I created my own blue, a mix of pigments and Majorelle Blue from Ives Saint Laurents´s house in Marracheck.
The work is divided into 4 parts:
First: Accumulation of thoughts- As in depression, the thoughts and ideas accumulate in our minds until a point where it is impossible to keep going (I to VI).
Second: Negation- When we finally feel low, when we try to forget and wipe out reality (VII to IX).
Third: Scar- When you finally start feeling better. But like after a wound heals, a scar stay. It is a reminder of what happened, and it will change with time. For that reason, this section is made in Newsprint, a kind of paper that degrades and changes with time (Scars)
Fourth: Life- Life is an accumulation of scars, or dealing with problems and being successful. To grow up is to be able to pass through these encounters. It is a wonderful feeling. These prints are made in thin and translucent paper. All of them together are put on an X-Rays viewer, so the light allows you to see through.
Of course, this is a personal interpretation, and a memorial to all the health workers who gave their time, even their lives, during the pandemic.
One last thing. After I finished this project, I felt myself again.
There is always hope.
