給我至愛的嫲嫲 – Forget Me Not
給我至愛的嫲嫲 – Forget Me Not, which roughly translates into “To My Beloved Mama”, is my honours project, which is a homage to the cherished time spent with my grandma, who lives with Alzheimer’s. Before my honours year, I paid her a visit in summer, sitting beside her and conversing with her, as she doesn’t remember a lot of her family members, let alone me. Despite how she was physically there in front of me, that charm, character, and cheekiness weren’t there anymore, making me realise the true weight of the situation.
As an artist, this made me want to explore the recreation of her flat and the room she resides in, to highlight her perception of the world, my experience with her and that sombre reality that comes with living with Alzheimer’s, but also to celebrate the life she once had.
Alzheimer’s plays a huge role in this project, as it heavily influences the technical, design, and artistic choices behind the environment. I want to showcase the strength of my technical foundations as much as I can, displaying the strong and founded rationale behind each decision.
The research that dictates my work ranges from something as simple as incorporating the water in the room (which comes from the etymology of forget-me-nots) to something broader, such as art therapy. Those who live with Alzheimer’s benefit a lot from the process of art therapy, encouraging cognitive function and thought expression when they would otherwise struggle to do so, and helps them appreciate the present moment.
Art therapy is an activity that my grandma enjoys, watercolouring specifically, the medium representing feelings of nostalgia and reverie due to its muted and faded colour pigmentation. Watercolour artists like Heikala and Mateusz Urbanowicz inspired me a lot with their rationalised use of colours and line work, which also played a huge part in my visuals
With this in mind, I wanted to try to draw all my textures and decals by hand in Adobe Photoshop, using a watercolour brush that produced a paper texture as well as a muted and dream-like colouring of the room. The outlines and details that I drew on top, alongside adding distortion to each asset’s mesh, added to the imperfection, haziness, and painterliness I wanted to achieve.
Since this was pretty much a one-to-one recreation of my grandma’s flat, it took a lot of guesswork out of my project, allowing me to allocate more time to representing the meaningful symbolism throughout my composition. I had a visual library of photos and videos of her room, floor plans, and furniture placements, despite her looking at me funny, wondering why some person was whipping out a measuring tape on her bed. It was really important that I got the scale and position correct, as it helped to ground the project in reality and reinforce the immersive nature.
