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Philippines

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1:00 PM-4:00 PM

Botanical Afternoon Tea Time

Bread making and food sharing session | Dealing in Distance|By Zelin Seah

Dealing in Distance: Botanical Afternoon Tea © courtesy of the artist

Botanical Afternoon Tea Time  invites participants to explore the entangled histories of plants, trade, and colonial migration through a shared act of baking and eating. Drawing from local markets and community gardens, the artist will collect edible plants native to the region and pair them with imported species from the global North, found in supermarkets. Together, these ingredients meet on a sheet of focaccia bread — a symbolic ground for dialogue and exchange. Through this process, participants learn how the botanical world has been classified, transported, and controlled under colonial systems, and how these movements parallel the migration of labor and culture. The workshop becomes both a meal and a map — tracing how taste, memory, and ecology intertwine across time and geography.

About the Artist

Zelin Seah

Zelin Seah is a Malaysian visual artist and lecturer in Fine Arts whose practice moves through the entanglements of land, memory, and material trace. Rooted in long-term research, his work examines how extractive economies and postcolonial regimes leave their imprint—on bodies, maps, and landscapes. Working across installation, fiber art, and cartographic interventions, he often employs natural materials such as rattan and oil palm waste to unearth the silent histories they carry.

From altered land titles to forgotten grasses, Seah’s recent projects explore how nature is framed through systems of value, and how ecological residues hold the ghosts of erased knowledge. He has undertaken residencies at basis e.V. Frankfurt, the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, and SAVVY Contemporary, and in 2025 presented his solo exhibition This Land is ( ) Land at Richard Koh Fine Art, Singapore. His works are included in the collections of the Singapore Art Museum and the National Art Gallery Malaysia.