In February the printer broke.
Whatever you printed came back as lines of cyan, magenta and yellow.
It was annoying and frustrating. I just wanted the printer back. I left the printer to work with a bunch of my images, with the hope it would fix itself, while I looked online for a solution.
The never-ending noise of the printer was irritating me, so at one point I went to the machine with the intention of turning it off. But I could not.
I can´t explain what happened, but I got enchanted by the abstractions it was producing, by the rhythm of a new image falling on the tray with a new treasure of colourful lines.
And suddenly I realised I didn’t want to fix the printer, but the images.
As a nurse working in dementia for the last six years, I felt I connected with this printer that was giving me back my memories completely broken. So I scanned them and work in photoshop to recover the information. And what I obtained was different, almost like a painting. I couldn’t believe it.
Many of these images were my memories, but many others were inspired by the stories my patients would tell when they arrived at the ward and they could still remember them.
It felt like this printer was one of the patients, whom I considered family. I was helping to recompose their stories. It felt as if for the first time I could win the battle I always lost when my patient's minds vanished forever.
“Lost Memoirs” is a memorial to those patients and their families, and to all the health workers I ever work with. I wanted to give them a voice they do not always have, and to create awareness about the disease with a message of hope, with a beautiful space for meditation, where everyone could find their own meaning.
One day we will find a solution. Medicine advances faster and faster, and we will forget what dementia was. But while we have it, let us not forget those who loved us so much.
There will always be hope.
