“To me, my home is the dearest yet the most distant.”

This project seeks to transcend temporal boundaries and extend memories through the medium of hand-printed photography textiles.

“Home is a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination. In this sense, it is a place of no return, even if it is possible to visit the geographical territory that is seen as the place of ‘origin.’”
Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. Routledge, 1996, p. 192.

As a non-Muslim Malaysian Chinese gay man, the notion of ‘home’ has always been fraught with complexity and ambiguity, shaped by the racial political issues and the pervasive discrimination faced by the LGBTQ community in Malaysia.

What if I could fold these memories away, pack it in a suitcase and accompany me on my journey? I ask.

“The house, even more than the landscape, is a ‘psychic state,’ and even when reproduced as it appears from the outside, it bespeaks intimacy.”
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press, 1994, p. 72.

Each textile is hand-printed with fragments I captured during my stay in my hometown. The act of folding and unfolding symbolizes the intimate and personal experience of revisiting memories. As the prints fade, these memories either diminish or persist within their own temporal and spatial confines.

Since the age of 17, I have seldom returned to my homeland. Yet, in each new place where I seek to establish a sense of belonging, I find myself instinctively reconstructing elements of the home I once knew. These migration experiences have gradually influenced the material choices and creative decisions behind my work. I strive for portability, transforming photography into tangible memories that can be touched, felt, interacted with, and carried alongside me. These textiles serve as liminal objects, bridging the past and future of my identity, embodying the continuous negotiation of self in the ever-shifting landscapes of memory and space.

By sharing this personal work, I aim to resonate with others who, like me, have contended with the effects of displacement and experienced the complexities of identity, memory, and belonging shaped by race, gender, sexuality, and political circumstances.