Caregiver (Mothering from a Distance)

Caregiver, 2022 is  a desktop video collage that consists of interlapping browser windows of my mother’s caregiver performing daily and repetitive tasks of care. I was seeking to make a portrait of domesticity and diasporic intimacy. In the process of making this video, I was also asking myself: How do our personal devices—our smartphones, iPads, computers, act as a prosthetic device that connects us to our most intimate relationships?

Since returning to the Philippines over 5 years ago, I often get asked the question ‘Why did you move back to Manila?’ The simple response is that I wanted to be near my aging mother. In being a close proximity to her, the emotional toll it took fell not only on me, but on the women who take care of her each and every day. For my mother’s caregivers, the practice of mothering from a distance is intertwined with current everyday technologies from Bailkbayan boxes and long distance phone calls, to more recent technologies offered by social media apps and Zoom video calls. As an immigrant and a Balikbayan, I have relied on translocal technologies, to stay connected to family in Manila while growing up in North America, and now that I live in Manila, the vice-versa is true.

Caregiver, 2022 will be featured at ‘Hitherto V’ group exhibition, at Project Space Pilipinas, Lucban in May 2022.