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Digital Illustration

The Silent Killer: Alzheimer’s Disease is personal for me. My beloved grandmother (“Yiayia”) lived with the disease for 20 long years; it was a tragedy for my mother and me, seeing how Alzheimer’s ripped her away from us. Interestingly, in her final years, she only spoke her native tongue – Greek. Until she didn’t speak at all. This illustration depicts Yiayia in the nursing home with my mother holding her hand. Visitation was hard: We never knew if she would laugh and smile at us, or be confused and scared, holding our hands tightly. I aimed to capture the hard truth of having someone so important in your life be lost to you, even though they still inhabit their body. And to visualize anatomically what we can’t see from the outside: My mother’s healthy brain is full-sized with thick, rounded folds, and grooves that are shallow; my grandmother’s diseased brain tissue atrophies and toxic proteins spread.
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