It is natural, as time passes, for the role of the child to shift and take place of the parent, becoming the nurturer and protector. That transition has, in some ways, naturally occurred between my mother and me. It crept up on me almost unnoticed, until fear made its presence known. That was when I realised there would come a time when I could no longer protect my mum from the inevitable. 

 

Looking through old photographs of my mum in her early adulthood, I realised I would never truly know the version of her in these photographs. Yet, I still feel a deep connection to her and to the person she was before motherhood. 

 

Using these photographs, I projected them on to my hands to represent life’s fragility and the way people live on in our memories. The image was then projected once more and photographed with deliberate movement to represent the passing of time, offering the viewer a distorted perspective of the memories shared between mother and daughter. 

 

This project is dedicated to my Mum. Titled أمي (Ummi) – translation: My Mother. A term of endearment in Arabic.