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More politicized than the term 'home', domesticity involves gender, sexuality, labour, class, ethnicity and taste. It concerns specific expectations of tradition, continuity and privacy. It connotes modes of pro-duction - biological, material, psychological, social, or national. Domesticity draws upon the performa-tive aspect of bodies in space - occupants, tenants, parents, grandparents, children, maids, architects, designers, builders - and delineates how these individuals visualize, negotiate and realize ambitions for comfort, security, privacy and independence provided through the agency of architecture, or the built environment.

Domesticity is also constituted through an amazing array of material objects ranging from soft furnishings, to practical items of everyday use, technological apparati such as refrigerators and vacuum cleaners, to useless knick knacks, souvenirs and gifts accumulated during family holidays, and sentimental possessions connoting ideas of hearth and home. In effect, domestic practices create and maintain the idealized notion of home.

Through found and constructed objects, images, as well as film and audio recordings, this exhibition explores the manifestation and conservation of domesticity in relation to ideas of nationhood, community, tourism and migration. The inquiry is set in the historic city quarter of Melaka. Ultimately, the observations presented at NUS Baba House reflect the relationships between the individual house and family space to the wider contexts of neighbourhood, city and nation.