What do maids do beyond cleaning our houses? Can good care-taking be strictly professional with no emotional attachment? Should it? What happens to a maid who is newly-arrived? And above all, what does a maid do on her days off?
Six photographers - incidentally, all of them women - went looking for some answers. Their brief was to expand our understanding of the lives maids lead here. At the time of their arrival, most maids have few resources and friends, and have to cope with missing their families. But they are also inventive.
Sundays are full of activities for those who want to learn, meet friends, play sports and commune with their gods. Sim Chi Yin and Joyce Fang visited several skills centers and self-help groups and came back with photographs that reveal an astonishing range of activities.
How Hwee Young and Law Kian Yan went to three families whose maids not only take care of the household chores, but have become the primary care-givers to the aged, the young and the disabled.
Wong Maye-E presents a glimpse of the often intimidating process a maid undergoes upon arrival - the medical checkup, the briefings by the employment agent - while coping witht the first rush of homesickness.
After staking out the airport for days, Wang Hui Fen finds a gem of a farewell story that is both heartwarming and amusing.
The result is a collection of documentary photographs that capture the less-known facets of a maid's life away from home.
Singapore is host to a significant population of domestic maids from the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bangladesh and elsewhere. There are 140,000 of them here. An estimated one in every seven households employs a maid.
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