Mirror represents the disconnect between the patient’s past memories and their present self.
Within Her depicts how an Alzheimer’s patient remembers their childhood home in a distorted form, based on the common tendency for patients to feel unfamiliar with their current home while longing for the house they lived in as a child.
Reminiscence portrays the patient’s illusion of her younger days. Soft shadows of green leaves overlap a photograph of the patient, while withered flowers lie discarded beneath it. This contrast evokes both nostalgia for her youth and a lingering sense of melancholy.
Covering is an illustration from the caregiver’s perspective, depicting their efforts to help the patient hold onto their memories. The patient’s illness, like endlessly falling snow, threatens to bury them in forgetfulness. Yet the caregivers persist, hoping the patient will remember even the smallest things.
Connect suggests that the patient’s childhood and present self can still be linked through music. Even after losing their sense of identity, hearing familiar songs from the past can sometimes bring back fragments of memory. However, this connection is fragile and uncertain, relying on chance. To reflect this instability, the connection is symbolized by a toy telephone made of string and paper cups.
Letter illustrates the collapse of the patient’s ability to understand language. As familiar words become incomprehensible to them, this work visualizes how language feels to them — distorted and confusing — capturing their sense of disorientation.
Losing directly contrasts the patient’s once vibrant, healthy self with their current, weakened state. In the reflection of a puddle, the patient appears lively, but this image is distorted and blurred — a fragile remnant of unstable memories. This work reveals what they have lost to the disease: vitality, health, and more.
Hope suggests that, although the patient suffers from the disease, their life is not defined solely by tragedy. Like an olive tree that grows and bears fruit even in barren soil, they can still experience moments of happiness and joy, reminding us that hope remains present in their lives.
What Remains
What Remains is a series of illustrations that explores what Alzheimer’s patients have lost and what they have not. It aims to bring the public closer to the disease by presenting a more relatable image of it, helping them understand it better.
