Dear S
A week ago, my mother posted a video of one of the pet turtles trying to escape. She keeps them by the entrance to the restaurant presumably for the Feng shui. In the clip, the turtle is attempting to climb out of a white plastic baby bathtub; latching its two front legs onto a ledge at the top and lifting its body upwards. There is no lid, no other obstacle than this physical feat – one senses it will be only a matter of time before the turtle succeeds. Altogether, there are three turtles purchased back in 2016 for my nephew Ollie, whose enthusiasm for them has long since expired. Each year they grow too large for their shared habitat and are thus moved to a new larger plastic container lightweight enough to clean regularly, where they can alternate between a few things: they sit, they waddle, they wait. They fight too. It’s true, my mother could just set the turtle free. Once upon a time, pet turtles who had outlived a certain period would be deposited into the lily pond at the local park. It happened with such frequency that there is now a large sign, in Malay and English, threatening large fines for those who leave their turtles at the pond.
If the above text implies her mother is some kind of callous monster who enjoys entrapping her children, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Kah Bee usually lives and works in Malmö, Sweden. For the past two months, she has been an artist in residence at Rupert in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Designer: Gailė Pranckūnaitė
Photos: Ugnius Gelguda
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