Art/Reflection:

This image was captured during a virtual group session with older adults living with advanced dementia from immigrant communities, after the COVID-19 lockdown forced the closure of our in-person memory day centre. The screen shows hands holding cherished objects—textiles, religious items, photographs, small heirlooms—chosen by participants themselves and offered toward the Zoom camera from within their homes. Faces are intentionally obscured, yet presence is unmistakable. Someone is there, sharing. When our community moved online, we feared that something essential would be lost: the warmth of physical co-presence and the subtle exchanges that occur in shared space. Instead, something unexpected emerged. The home became not a barrier, but a bridge.  Participants reached for what was closest—objects that carried memory, identity, and meaning—and invited others into their personal worlds. These sessions became acts of co-creation. Rather than following a prescribed agenda, participants shaped the encounter through what they chose to share and how they shared it. In advanced dementia, language often recedes, but the impulse to communicate does not. Holding an object up to the screen became an act of agency and generosity. Some participants spoke; others gestured, smiled, or lingered in silence, allowing the object itself to speak. Meaning was expressed verbally and non-verbally through tone, movement, and presence. These moments were not performances for research or therapy; they were invitations. The objects functioned as extensions of self, allowing participants to say, without words, “This matters to me,” and “I am still here.” They reveal not loss, but capacity—the capacity to choose, to create, to relate, and to be recognised. What this image captures cannot be fully coded or quantified.  It holds tenderness, pride, vulnerability, and connection. The visible hands remind us that care is relational and embodied, even when mediated by technology. The absence of faces shifts attention away from cognitive decline and toward participation, presence, and mutual recognition. I Am Still Here challenges assumptions that people living with advanced dementia are digitally excluded or disengaged. It reframes technology not as a clinical tool, but as a threshold—one that can be crossed with care, cultural sensitivity, and relational intent.