CIELA

The project ‘Ciela’ from Shay Amitai delves into family and how relations between elderly employers and caregivers are constructed to become family-like. Boundaries between private and professional tend to blur as we look at Ciela her story. It explores multiple interpretations of Ciela, a Filipino woman who worked as a caregiver for Shay her grandmother in Israel. Through this story Shay lays eyes on care-taking in Israel and providing for a family far away in the Philippines.


Ciela remains a visitor in both countries, seeking for the meaning of home. Both the desert-like city she lives in now and the green mountains where she used to live collide in her life, whereby distance translates itself into her everyday reality. The story deals with Ciela’s reoccurring emotions when losing loved ones and how she continues to care for others. It questions what we see in the system carework has become. The images are perhaps saying thank you to Ciela and provide us insight in how it feels to work abroad, how fragile elder life is and how we fall back on family in its most soft sense.