Memory Palace is a short documentary capturing the everyday routine of a dementia patient in a nursing home. It is a portrait of a fading memory. The installation is not only an invitation to submerge in a journey to the past and nostalgia, but more importantly, to reflect about the cruel reality of dementia and its social and personal repercussions.
"The first thing that I usually do when visiting Barcelona is see my mother. Sadly, my mother suffers from dementia and lives in a nursing home. This time, when I visited her, she was sad and she didn’t want to communicate. I just sat next to her and started stroking her hands. She grabbed my hand like a child grabs her parents’ hands and her face changed instantly. Suddenly she found comfort and security. I picked up my phone and started taking pictures of her hands and her surroundings. I was trying to capture the power of that single stroke.
As I was looking at her hands, I reflected on all the things that my mother has been through in her life, things that made my mother who she was, a strong, positive and caring woman. When a few years ago she started losing her memory, she became fragile, insecure and sad. I thought “This is a different person; my mother is gone”. But is she gone? This is how my project started."
