Jelena Bõtškova

• Dementia. Disintegration
• Tutor: Jaan Toomik
• oil on canvas, sound: a recurring grandfather story
• different sizes

How to express dementia? For me as a bystander, it looks like the disintegration of the personality, and some of the pieces are missing. At the same time, childish traits become more visible: naivety, resentment, and stubbornness. He can even perceive himself as a child.

He doesn’t remember what happened yesterday, but he remembers perfectly well what happened in his childhood, thus he can tell the same story over and over again. He can see dead relatives and forget the names of familiar objects. He tries to convince himself and others that he is fine and that it is the world around him that is going crazy. Gradually, the world becomes more and more incomprehensible and abstract for him: the words and faces around him become unfamiliar.