Jaclyn Reyes
ARTIST, RESEARCHER,
& CULTURAL ORGANIZER
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Pahina: Reciprocity, Care, and Collective Storytelling
Presented as part of MoMA PS1’s Family Festival: Make Your Own World, June 28–29, 2025, Queens, NY.The installation was grounded in the layered meanings of the Tagalog word pahina—referring both to a page in a story and to the act of easing labor through shared effort. Through this conceptual frame, the project offered a space to explore how diasporic knowledge, reciprocity, and care could shape creative world-building and community connection.
Pahina featured three interactive components:
- Make a Pamaypay: Participants created hand fans (pamaypay) using paper, markers, and craft sticks—a practical household item in the Philippines. The activity blended everyday function with decorative expression.
- Color & Reflect: Children colored illustrations of native Philippine plants and their symbolic meanings. Printed on wildflower seed paper, the activity sheets extended moments of reflection into the realm of ecological care and regeneration.
- Grow the Pahina Garden: Families contributed handmade paper leaves to a collaborative mural, constructing a collective garden that embodied themes of contribution, mutual support, and interconnectedness.
The project was conceptualized and facilitated by members of Little Manila Queens Bayanihan Arts: Hennessy Baran, Rocco Cetera, Xenia Diente, Charlie Lopez, Jaclyn Reyes, and Ezra Undag.
Pahina reflected LMQBA’s ongoing commitment to community-based cultural organizing and the use of participatory art as a method for sustaining diasporic memory, fostering translocal solidarities, and reimagining shared futures.