Wild Patch, 2024-ongoing, supported by British Council Connection through Culture. Photo by Gab Mejia



Wild Patch, a collaborative multi-site project initiated by Derek Tumala and curator Ligaya Salazar. It explores the power and symbolism of weeds in the Philippines and the UK. Understood as an undesirable plant in the context of a planned garden and in agricultural farming, weeds thrive in conflict with societal preferences and productivity. 

This project explores the act of othering in the pursuit of a manicured garden, mirroring that beauty and functionality can only exist only in a ‘normative’ and ‘morally right’ society. 

Through a series of foraging walks and shared meals, in ecologically distinct ‘patches’ of earth, both in the PH & UK, the project seeks to question the idea of weeds as ‘other’ both as a metaphor for queerness and diasporic communities in the global North. Wild Patch collaborated with ecological organizations Emerging Islands (PH) and ESEA Sisters in Nature (UK), with support from Delifna Foundation and UP Vargas Museum. 



Wild Patch (PH)


Photo by Gab Mejia



Participants with Emerging Islands and Barangay Up-Uplas residents. Photo by Gab Mejia



Residents of Barangay Up-Uplas, Sudipen, La Union, Philippines. Photo by Gab Mejia
We spent a month with Emerging Islands in studying several landscapes that has a community that practices foraging as a way of life. We went to a mangrove forest, a mountain and a riverbed valley. The rich biodiversity in these areas provided us to learn the existing ecologies that operate in a fragile ecosystem that is affected by climate, capitalism and geopolitics. 

The foraging walk was designed in collaboration with Emerging Islands, Celso Jucutan, Coordinator, Environmental Management, DMMMSU (Don Mariano Marcos Memorial State University, La Union PH), and Marcelino Perez Jr, Barangay Captain of Up-Uplas, Sudipen, La Union, together with the elders of the barangay. 




Wild Patch (UK)



River Lea Wetlands, Tottenham, London. Photo by JY Mak


We spent a few weeks exploring notions of foraging in a place where the practice has seen a resurgence in a small segment of society that draws on knowledge largely forgotten through decades of industrialisation, convenience and ‘progress’. We explored a managed forest in Norfolk, a seemingly barren coastline full of Swiss chard and wetlands in the midst of the urban context of London. 




Esea Sisters Nature Walk, Tottenham Marshes, London. Photo by JY Mak


We collaborated with ESEA Siters Nature Walk group in creating a walk through the River Lea Wetlands and Tottenham Marshes with a group of women and queer diasporic folk with roots in East and Southeast Asia. By seeking out how wild plants thrive in urban context of the Global North, we discussed parallels with how ESEA diasporic communities connect with nature in a city and thrive in a place that’s both familiar and alien at the same time.


Photo by JY Mak



ESEA Sisters Nature Walk, London. Photo by JY Mak




Wild Patch is an ongoing artistic research project with a publication to be released on Q4 2026.