Care. Dwelling. Movement. Unseen. Life. Residues of Touch was a workshop and temporary participatory installation by Giah De los Reyes-Geronimo @micro.orgiahnism that began with what remained: onion skins, avocado pits, tea leaves, coffee grounds. Kitchen remnants. Domestic residues.
In this documentation by @berniegeronimo , Giah explains her thinking and the process behind the two-day Batik + dyeing workshop extracted from food wastes collected from the kitchens of Rome and Milan, and dyed on fabrics that were donated to her by her filipino migrant community. The fabrics were then collectively hung altogether onto drying laundry racks on the last day of the symposia.
@orgiahnism@micro.orgiahnism
Workshop
Residues of Touch
Giah De los Reyes
@orgiahnism@micro.orgiahnism
Giah De los Reyes-Geronimo led a two-day Batik dye workshop with natural dyes from food waste collected from the kitchens of Rome. On the second day a special reading by Charito Basa, founder of the Filipino Women’s Council, a grassroots organization that promotes the rights and empowerment of Filipina migrant workers in Italy.
After the participants’ fabrics dyeing process was complete, they were placed on ordinary domestic drying racks.
Residues of Touch. Two-day natural dyeing workshop and participatory temporary installation happening soon at the @istitutosvizzero in Rome. Thursday March 26th 2026 - Friday March 27th 2026
“Thinking with Nipa palms, and the afterlives of plantations” is the third of four workshops that artist Giah De los Reyes-Geronimo has created as part of Voyaging Vapors. Participants sat on the floor in the former director’s house of the Singapore Botanic Garden, making roof shingles from nipa palms under Giah’s guidance. Photographs by Will Davis.
@orgiahnism@micro.orgiahnism
Thinking with Nipa palms & the afterlives of plantations, a Nipa thatching workshop as part of Voyaging Vapors: Plant Histories of Plantation Architecture. Chapter 1: Plant Histories, Singapore Botanic Gardens, 29–30 January, 2026.
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What happens when plantation systems no longer appear as fields, but continue to organize life in other ways? Where do their logics resurface today? How do extraction, repetition, and invisible maintenance continue to shape everyday life?
This workshop invites participants to think about plantations not only as historical agricultural sites, but as enduring systems whose afterlives structure contemporary social conditions. Working with nipa palm (Nypa fructicans) fronds from Singapore Botanic Gardens, participants make a small architectural gesture, a miniature roof shingle, that becomes a tool for reflection on repetition, maintenance, care, and collective survival beyond monocrop thinking.
The workshop will be held at the Burkhill Hall, a former residence of the Director of the Botanic Gardens. The symposium is organized by the research group “Voyaging Vapors: Plant Histories of Plantation Architectures” led by Dr. Will Davis at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), with Dr. Rixt Woudstra (University of Amsterdam), Siddharta Perez (NUS Museum), Giah De los Reyes-Geronimo, and Hélène Padma De Mello (USI). The symposium is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and is organized in collaboration with and support from Singapore Botanic Gardens, National Parks Board (Nparks), National University of Singapore Museum, the Swiss Institute (Rome), and Università della Svizzera italiana.
More info: / @voyagingvapors
📸 Snaps from Bakay Kubo Kahit Munti Workshop with Giah De los Reyes and Will Davis last January 10, 2026 held at Puon.
✨ We would like to thank everyone who participated in the workshop. Tune in for more activities and workshops!
#BahayKuboKahitMunti
#AFTLibrary
#puonbookshop
MAAWISKAYO!
🛖 BAHAY KUBO, KAHIT MUNTI! 🛖
Join us on January 10 (Saturday) at 2:00 PM for a workshop about the Bahay Kubo and its vegetable garden. We will make a group tapestry from the natural dye of the bahay kubo song vegetables with pictures and text. Workshop facilitated by @orgiahnism and @serene.wd
Activities lined up:
🎨 Making and mixing natural plant dye
🌴 Talking about different kinds of buildings made out of plants, and what makes them “traditional”
🍅 Learn about where plants come from and how they like to grow together
Meet the workshop facilitators:
✨ Giah is an interdisciplinary artist based in Milan. Her practice engages materiality and environment as central points of inquiry, unfolding through plant-dyed textiles, installations, photography, video, and combined media. She is a recipient of the Prince Claus Seed Award 2025.
✨ Will is an architectural historian interested in the politics of using plants in buildings. His first book, "Palm Politics: Warfare, Folklore, and Architecture" will be published later this year.
📍Alfredo F. Tadiar Library and Puón
🔥 This event is FREE and OPEN TO ALL. 🔥
✍🏼 Register now! Link in bio - https://bit.ly/BahayKuboKahitMunti
#bahaykubo
#kahitmunti
#voyagingvapors
#AFTLibrary
#puonbookshop
Yesterday, Typhoon Tino devastated once again our community in Iloilo. It made me reflect on the work i’m doing, To Live in Condition in 2023 until now, as an inquiry into the ways we live and adapt within environments where we constantly have to negotiate our place.
That year, I began sourcing Talisay leaves (Terminalia catappa) from the creek behind our house, an urban slum area in Iloilo where I grew up. I was drawn to it because aside from its dyeing qualities (yellow and black, if you’re lucky u get green), despite the polluted water and the harshness of its surroundings, it continues to live.
Collecting its leaves became a way for me to archive and document the creek as it was being “renovated” by the local government. It became my site of observation, material, and means of understanding. Through this process, I began reflecting on the parallel conditions of survival between the natural and the human, how the Talisay endures toxicity, just as families like mine have endured cycles of instability and neglect. They have lived here long before I even existed. And for as long as I can remember, urban poverty has never really been relieved but always only restructured.
When I went home in June, I documented the houses along the creek as part of this project, including our home. It became visually clearer to me the “adaptive architecture”, or in our local term, “disponeering” aka the art of making do. Houses patched together from plywood, nipa shingles, metal sheets, tarpaulins (from past politicians ads), hollow blocks, and persistence. “Tapal lang” is an improvised architecture of survival.
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If you wish to help, please check out the last slide for more details of our mutual aid. Madamo guid nga salamat.
#TyphoonTino #Iloilo #mutualaid
New course for @usi_accademia students! History, theory, and making plants into buildings. Featuring our dear friend Trachycarpus fortunei, aka the Ticino palm, which we will observe and collect with researchers from @wslresearch and workshop with @orgiahnism . Benvenuti a tutti!
