Red Curtain

This photograph belongs to the series Lost Memories - Torio’s love letter to the dementia patients he takes care of as a nurse in a hospital ward. In February, his printer broke. Everything he printed came out as lines of cyan, magenta, and yellow. He left the printer to work with a bunch of images, hoping it would fix itself while he looked for a solution online. It was annoying and frustrating, but it proved a fruitful revelation. The never-ending noise of the printer was so irritating that he went to it intending to turn it off, but he couldn’t. Suddenly he became enchanted by the abstractions produced by the printer, the new treasure of colorful lines forming on each image. He realized he did not want to fix the printer; he wanted to fix the images instead.

As a nurse working with dementia patients for the last six years, Torio felt connected to the idea that the printer gave him back completely fractured memories. He scanned the images and processed them in Photoshop to recover the information, and the result was very different, almost like a painting. Many of the images were personal memories, but others were inspired by his patient’s stories, which they told the artist when they were in his ward. With his patient's memories fading, it oddly felt as if the printer was behaving like one of his patients. Inspired by the love he felt for his patients, Torio began to recompose their stories: “For the first time, I could win the battle I always lost when my patient’s minds vanished forever.”

Lost Memories is dedicated to the artist’s patients, their families, and all his fellow health workers. He wanted to give them a voice they did not always have by raising awareness about the disease while providing a message of hope. The images offer a space for meditation, where everyone can contemplate and find their own meaning. From the perspective of a nurse, Torio continues to hope for a cure. As medicine advances faster and faster, dementia will fade from our memories. But while it exists, we must not forget those who loved us so much. There will always be hope.