ARTERI’s ‘Documents’ are art projects or art historical musings for the blog in the form of photo-essays, videos and writings.

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These are a selection of old and more recent prints I found featuring my mother, with the exception of one image.

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Here she is standing along a small road in Pudu, trying to trace back some greasy remnants of our lives in the mid-80s. In the rented room, I was raised to become a canto-pop loving child with the help of a record store downstairs – my parents claim I could sing Danny Chan hits at the age of three. In this photo, it is easy to imagine my mother saying in Cantonese, “Fai dit yeng la, hou yit ah” (faster take, very hot ah).

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A picture taken in Mantin (Seremban), with my maternal grandmother in the background. Many of my growing-up years were spent in this tiny kampung, where the nights are air-con cold and the daytime sun is only good for siestas or baths in the river that cuts through the settlement. My grandfather became senile by the time I got into secondary school and passed away a few days before Princess Diana’s death, except his episode was much calmer: after a breakfast of soda biscuits/coffee, and an outdoors haircut, sitting on his favourite rattan chair a few steps away from where this photograph was taken. Of all his children — five daughters and one son — my grandmother said it is my mother who was the kindest to him during the late stages of his senility.

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When RapidKL released the new fancier busses in 2006, they had a free run all over the city where commuters can sit as long as they want to be familiarised with the routes. My mother decided it was a good chance to revisit KL without the stress of driving. Throughout the rides, it was easy to tell she was struck with nostalgia — she kept pointing at new constructions, or old landmarks, saying things have changed so much since she was a teenager looking for a living in the middle of Imbi.

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Mama and my father eating in Geylang, Singapore. Three decades ago, she was a young girl on the island looking for a job. Somehow she found her talent along the way — the ability to sew.

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Once during the hungry ghost month I decided join her with my camera for the food offering ritual at a clearing near our flat. She normally provides the spirits with pasar malam (night market) biscuits and fruits on little red trays. Disappointingly in the prints (maybe also to my relief), there wasn’t anyone else besides herself.

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Here is a photograph taken of her rushing to a wedding dinner. I helped her pair an asymmetrical 80s blouse with an XXL black cotton flower brooch on her upper right shoulder (made with fabric scraps for my own prom accessory after my Form 5, Secondary School). I feel she could have done much more with her hair like some regular party aunties – but looking back at the photo, the colourful hair-clip is actually quite amusingly inappropriate.

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Mama and her younger sister who was a Diamond Water Filter saleswoman, but who recently decided it was easier to take up a regular office job. The ‘miracle water’ apparently did not cure her son’s skin problems… though she has told us before, if it weren’t for Diamond Water the scabs would have been a lot worst. She persuaded my mother into getting one for the flat. When my mother visits me in my rented room now, she would bring about five litres of the filtered water for my consumption, often against my very stern protest: a woman her age should not carry such heavy loads, poor shoulders. But then I understand: I am really just her only child.

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An image taken of me when I was little by my mother in our old terrace house in Cheras, with a sick kitten that disappeared some time later. I don’t believe he felt no love and ran away — it is either he was stolen or he met an unfortunate accident. I was deeply saddened but my parents didn’t have anymore cats after that. In 2008, I was lucky to have co-adopted a wonderfully naughty tortoise-shell cat with a friend living nearby. Her name is Polat.

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I dressed her up one Chinese New Year and made her hold a stalk of fake cherry blossom.

These days I don’t live with her anymore, but we talk on the phone often. When people say they miss their mother’s cooking, nothing can be more true for me.

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Jun Kit is a photographer and designer based in Kuala Lumpur.