Alaga

2020 — 2021

Presented as a culmination of the Objectifs Documentary Award, Emerging Category

Alaga (in Tagalog) 
noun: pet, ward, person, animal or thing being taken care of 
associated with: to raise, to nurture, to protect, custody, to care for, to look after

As the end of her nanny’s contract of service approaches, the artist contemplates the place she has come to inhabit within their relationship throughout the years. Tracing the fleeting impermanence of lived moments between two women, Alaga explores the connection that is embedded in the spaces they have shared and occupied. Seen through the vision of the artist, the series of images is a recollection of tender moments that can never offer a representation of the relationship in its entirety, but is a work of remembrance and memory that spans almost three decades. Drawing on personal histories and family archives, journal entries and a series of images and text made by both the artist and her nanny, Alaga is a manifestation of a tangible source of collective memory, stories and an ode to a shared life across distance and time.

Since birth, I have been under the care of my nanny, Letecia B. Ducusin who has been living and working with my family as a foreign domestic worker. I address her as Aunty and she refers to me as her ‘Alaga’. Over the past years together, I have visited her hometown in the Philippines with her several times, and became godmother to two of her grandchildren.

Under Singapore’s labour laws, foreign domestic workers must retire at the age of 60. As my nanny’s contract of service nears its end in 2021, I contemplate the place that I have come to inhabit within our relationship. Motivated by a desire to hold on to moments of our relationship, Alaga is a tangible manifestation of remembrance, memory and a shared life that spans almost three decades.