SEAT AT THE TABLE
ESEA Unseen x Swilipino
9 September 2023
Museum of the Home
Drawing from ESEA Unseen’s shared histories in the fashion industry and a critical awareness of fast fashion waste, the workshop breathed new life into discarded and forgotten textiles. At the same time, it centered the absence of domesticity and marginalised communities in mainstream social memory, focusing on textile-making as a form of collective activism.
Sue and Kim taught participants basic sewing techniques using discarded fabric, clothes and trimmings to create personalised placemats. Participants were invited to share their stories of identity and heritage, and embed these narratives into their placemats to imagine how diaspora stories could be woven into the fabric of history, allowing memories from domestic spaces to occupy a larger history.
Chef Tintin Jonsson from Swilipino shared a plant-based Filipino-inspired lunch – fried tofu (bubuk), kangkong and bean sprouts (peanut sauce), tapioca crackers, pandan sticky rice cubes and pickled cucumbers – to celebrate food and family dynamics.
At the end of the session, the group gathered and joined the individual placemats to create a collaborative patchwork cloth, creating the first part of a wider tablecloth installation project by ESEA Unseen.
Photos by Brandon Huang