Title: 'If my mum had a twin sister ...' (2010)

Medium: Photography

Size: A2 (framed)

Worcester Open, Worcester Art Gallery & Museum, UK.

Exploring the fear of loss through the live performance and photographic documentation; in response to fear of my mum falling again. She agrees to stand on top of her back garden wall (safety in place) and I take these two photographs of her, one second after the other. One is natural and one is performed.

“Initially I wanted to have a photograph of my mother in a gallery space where there may be no images of South Asian people. I remember asking my mother that if she had a twin sister how would she feel.” She replied “I guess I would have had someone to play with when I was little, someone to connect with but then I would have missed her, a lot, once I or her got married or when we became displaced from India by coming over to the UK to live and work. Are you worried about losing me?.” I replied “Yes because you fell over in your last visit to India and I was scared I was going to lose you and never see you again.”

I started to imagine that if I did lose my mother and her twin sister came to mum’s house and/or the funeral, for a split second I would see my mum.