Tindahan Sa Tahanan Co.

Tindahan Sa Tahanan Co. is an exhibition by Filipino art collective Sa Tahanan Co., paying homage to Filipino tindahans: stores that sell essential daily goods. Tindahans have evolved to be a cultural icon encapsulating everyday Filipino life. Alongside Filipino labor migration, Filipinos began to establish and import the concept of Tindahans abroad. For them, Tindahans are more than groceries: they are places of encounter with kabayans, momentarily easing homesickness through purchasing sentimental, imported Filipino foods.

The exhibition brings together eight Filipino artists based in the UAE, UK, Italy, Qatar, and the Philippines. Within the architecture of Tindahans, they explore the “grocery list” as a communal portrait of migrant memory through newly commissioned sculptural installation, photography, graphic design, and film. The grocery list is an essential to cooking a Filipino meal abroad; cooking is a ritual of sustenance and survival, but also of preserving ties to home and culture. To the diaspora, the grocery list is a deeply personal collage of a migrant’s life, telling rich stories of nostalgia, longing, and gustatory memory.

Exhibiting Artists

Tropical Futures Institute (IT/PH)

Assi Abogado (UAE)

Nathaniel Enriquez (UAE)

Clyde Gabriel (UAE)

Laxmi Hussein (UK)

Carina Santos (UK)

Pyong Sumaria (UAE)

Jam Moreno (PH/QA)

About the Collective

Sa Tahanan Co. began in the United Arab Emirates as an arts collective that platforms Filipino creatives, first across the Gulf and then the globe — bridging the accessibility gap with institutional opportunities. Co-founded by curator Anna Bernice delos Reyes and artist Augustine Paredes in 2020, the collective focuses on arts practice as a means of diasporic representation in creative and cultural industries.

Through community building, cultural research, art exhibits, art sales, and other creative collaborations, we make space for Filipinos in the contemporary art scene. The collective has also grown an active WhatsApp community of Filipino creatives from around the world — not only finding collaborators in each other but also sharing resources for project grants and other creative opportunities.

Previous projects and publications include: Sa Ating Pag-tahan/ In Our Stillness (2025, Sharjah Biennial 16 April Acts Program), Cooking from a Migrant Memory (2024, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale), When the Typhoon Ends (2024, Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale), Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory [Volume 6:1] (2023), Asian Artist Collectives Index (2023, Asia Art Archive), Collectives: New Modes of Production [written by Melissa Gronlund for the book, Arts of the Emirates] (2022, Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation), FILIPINO POETS & PACITA ABAD: GLORIOUS AND GILDED IN GOLD (2022, Jameel Arts Centre), ‘Are the Arts Essential’ Conference (2022, NYU Abu Dhabi)