PROGRAMMES /

---

The Plantation Plot

 

Public Programmes

---

Curatorial Tour by Lim Sheau Yun

26 April & 10 May 2025, 11:00am
30 August 2025, 1:30pm

---

Artist Talk by Cian Dayrit 

10 May 2025, 3:00pm

---

Colonialism, Class, and Caste in the Plantations
Talk by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, moderated by Ong Kar Jin 

17 May 2025, 3:00pm

PLEASE NOTE WE ARE FULLY SUBSCRIBED.

---

An Artistic Pilgrimage Retracing Alfred Russel Wallace’s Journey in Sarawak
Talk by Chang Yoong Chia & Ming Wah  

14 June 2025, 3:00pm

---

Film Series 
Co-curated by Lim Sheau Yun & Gogularaajan Rajendran

26 & 27 July 2025

---

AWAS!MAWAS! Puppet Parade
Performance

30 August 2025, 3:00pm

---

Coolies' Chorus
Tamil folksongs performed by singers Mu. Athi Raman, K.P. Ambikapathy, and M. Santhirasekaran

20 September 2025, 3:00pm

In 1998, a collection of Tamil folksongs was posthumously published in Chennai. Compiled by Dr. R. Dhandayutham of the University of Malaya, it contained hundreds of folksong lyrics once sung on Malayan plantations. Over two decades later, filmmaker Gogularaajan Rajendran stumbled upon the archive, struck by its raw, unfiltered account of Tamil workers’ lives. Working with folk singers and experts in India, he began a process of reconstruction. 

---

 

Workshops

---

Natural Indigo Dyeing Workshop 

26 & 27 April 2025, 11:30am – 2:30pm
Fee: RM35/pair, RM66/2 pairs. Non sharing.
REGISTER

Learn how to dye a pair of cotton socks with cloud patterns.

---

Leaf Textured Ceramic Workshop

15 June 2025, 1:00pm – 2:30pm

Fee: RM150
Register: 0102062589 (WhatsApp message only)

Unleash your creativity in our Leaf Texture Small Plate Workshop! Bring your own special leaf and learn to imprint its unique beauty onto clay. This hands-on workshop includes 250g of clay, bisque and glaze firing, simple packaging, and postage of your finished piece. Create a beautiful and personal ceramic treasure!

---

Bookbinding with Natural Pigments from Flowers and Leaves

21 June 2025, 10:00am – 2:00pm

Fee: RM230
Register: littlesyam@gmail.com

Learn the pounding technique of transferring the natural pigments from leaves or flowers onto fabric to create a botanical image for the book cover.

---

Urban Sketching 

12 July 2025, 10:30am – 3:00pm

Fee: RM310 for adults; RM270 for tweens (aged 10-13 yo)
Register: gladsimpson@gmail.com

In this Urban Sketching Workshop, Gladys will share her tips on sketching. She’ll guide you on how to simplify complex scenes, loosen up sketches and apply watercolours to your drawings.

---

Edible Garden Design

26 July 2025, 3:00pm – 4.30pm

Fee: RM135 (early bird, register before 15th July) or RM150 per pax
inclusive of guide and materials 
Register: giftshop@Ilhamgallery.com

Learn about what we can plant, and how to plan an edible garden, in order to change our balconies and backyards into productive landscapes.

---

Stories Beyond the Plantation Plot: A Generative Writing Workshop

7 September 2025, 2:00pm – 5:00pm

Fee: RM70
Register: info@ilhamgallery.com

Plantations radically reshape physical landscapes and reconfigure human and nonhuman life. But as Anna Tsing reminds us, “th[is] modern human conceit is not the only plan for making worlds: we are surrounded by many world-making projects, human and not human.”

In this workshop, participants will use the artwork in The Plantation Plot exhibition to notice the other transformative forces at work inside and outside the plantation space. Through exercises and writing prompts, we will explore these counter-narratives and perspectives, creating new writing to challenge the fiction of conquest and progress at the heart of so much ecological and human devastation. There will also be time to share our writing/ideas and exchange feedback.

This workshop will be facilitated by Nur’aishah Shafiq. She recently completed her MFA in Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She edits creative nonfiction for SUSPECT Journal. Her writing explores ideas of interspecies kinship and nonhuman subjectivities.

---