This photograph, focusing not on gravestones in the background, but on an array of watering cans which might belong to workers and private visitors of a cemetery, captures the need for maintenance across religious traditions and personal remembrance practices, and recasts caretaking of spaces as ritual practice that can transcend these boundaries.

Maintenance of Memorialisation © Jill J. Tan

Jill J. Tan is a Singaporean writer, artist, and researcher committed to collaborative practice and multimodal exploration through games, performance, and poetics. As a PhD student in Anthropology at Yale, Jill studies death and dying in Singapore and works with the funeral profession. Elsewhere, she researches agency in children's dance, is making an interactive workshop on parasitism and mutualism, and co-runs Little Study Zine. Jill is a contributing editor of the Society of Cultural Anthropology’s Visual and New Media Review. To find out more about Jill's work, visit jilljtan.com.