Memory and Identity are closely related. I struggle to capture the elusive memories and life experiences which my mother’s mental illness is unabashedly stealing. Emptiness and fears are revealed in each portrait. Her objects, albums and letters bring her fading memories back, some real and others a figment of her imagination. I fantasize with the idea of vanishing those empty spaces. In search for permanence, she tries to embrace her life story with quiet desperation and unusual strength for one so fragile. I engage in this struggle between absences and silences with her. I research and reframe her past to stop it from sinking into oblivion.