Vanessa Gaston’s Collection, ‘Common Fabric’, explores the journey of natural materials, from source to person, to product—‘of leaf to life’. 

From the fishing and weaving villages of her Visayan region, to reviving historical vernacular of tribes and coastal communities, her collection ponders how ancestry, cultural memory, archipelagic geography, and livelihood practices, play into experiential environments of built spaces and objects.

On display: her Marina 'fish basket’ chair is inspired by fish traps from a local method called ‘bobo’, while the drinks table captures the endangered wood carving practices of a Southern tribe in the Philippines, and conserves them through laser cutting technology on pineapple paper repurposed from discarded leaves of a past harvest.

Each item holds a powerful narrative of our interwoven realities, the invisible strand that connects people and practices in the fabric of life.