Zenab Kazmi

A Malang's Guide to Returning to Yourself

A digital zine exploring identity as a process of return through photographic collage, text, archival imagery, migratory pathways, and personal symbolism.

“This digital zine uses collage, text, archival imagery, maps, and personal photographs to explore identity as a process of return rather than invention. Moving through themes of queerness, migration, lineage, devotion, and memory, the work asks what remains of the self beneath inherited expectations.Guided by the figure of the malang (one who wanders and resists fixed categories), the zine traces multiple sites of recognition: queer histories, ancestral geographies, shrine spaces, and intimate rituals of self-reflection. Fragments of Urdu and English appear throughout, reflecting the layered languages through which I understand myself.Rather than imagining 'becoming' as a forward movement, this work proposes return as a form of remembering what was always there.”