I Am Here

I Am Here (V.I & II) is a printed publication featuring aged care residents’ stories. The project emerged from my ten years of experience working on long-form documentary projects focused on documenting stories of older members of my community. I Am Here explores art practice as a means of fostering dialogue and connectedness between aged-care residents, staff, and the rest of the community. Specifically, I worked closely with St. Vincent’s Aged Care in Brisbane, Qld, —a non-profit institution with which I ran an initiative aiming for aged-care residents to feel connected during COVID-19 pandemic. Such project involved setting up video-calls and face-to-face social visits to residents on a weekly basis for a period of two years—as well as recording conversations, transcribing, editing, photographing, designing, and publishing. The first two issues were published in collaboration with Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, and have been distributed for free in aged care facilities aiming for residents and staff to engage with their own stories.