Homing Desires (2023) explores the concept that indicates that in spite of diasporans’ great yearning to feel at home, not all of them sustain an ideology of return to the place of “origin.” Other explorations in this project are the effects diaspora have on the people who left their home country in search of a better life, and whether homesickness should be considered a mental illness. How our origins turns into a place of no return, even if it is possible to visit the geographical territory.

To explore these themes, Mala manipulates archived home videos using data bending. This technique permanently alters the metadata of the video files, and the glitches this method creates symbolize how memories of one’s homeland can be displaced or distorted in the search of belonging elsewhere. Anastacia has replaced the binary codes with dates that are important to her personal history, such as the day she moved from Malaysia to Norway, or her Malaysian grandmother’s birthday.

Disorienting glitch videos are juxtaposed with melancholic melodies — recorded and sung by the artist herself — that create an uneasy balance between nostalgia and disconnection, and the past and present.

Home has become the homing desire and home becomes essentially placeless. The members of a diasporic community, in their claim for citizenship in the second space, eventually lose their desire to return to the homeland.

Homing Desires is set to be exhibited in February and March 2025 as part of the Photopsia Exhibition at 100 Tonson Foundation, Bangkok.