5 Questions with Mariam Ella Arcilla
Mariam Ella Arcilla is a Filipina-Singaporean creative producer, writer, arts marketer, and community organiser.
She runs Magenta House, a multi-modal space in her Gadigal home that comes alive through workshops, communal meals, talks, library sessions, and a shop. Mariam has managed galleries, artist-run collectives, and grassroots projects since 2006.
As a creative practitioner, she has contributed to programs at Institute of Modern Art, Arts House Melbourne, Powerhouse Museum, 4A, Saluhan, Welcome Merchant, Liquid Architecture, and HOTA. Mariam is the co-editor of Debris Magazine: Issue 05 (out in May) and former Co-Chair at Runway Journal.
Some activities at Magenta House in the last few months (top left: Pangalay dance workshop with Sitti Obeso, Pahad Panayaman & Bhenji Ra; right: Welcome Merchant Palestinian food demo with Chef Aheda; bottom left: Tagalog language class with Happy Feraren; right: Lebanese Mahshi Koussa workshop with Dayaa Sahtein)
No.1
Tell us a little bit about Magenta House. What was the impetus behind its inception? What do you envision coming out of this space?
Magenta House is an artist-run space in Redfern, Gadigal that positions hospitality and co-nourishment as a creative practice. I’m particularly interested in the generative dynamic between hosthood and guesthood and what this might look like through the intertwinement of art, food and knowledge-trading. Magenta House operates inside the micro-terrace that I share with my artist-husband, Mason Kimber. We organise and support artists and culture workers to stage culturally-vital workshops, pop-up exhibitions, communal meals, reading sessions, test kitchens, book launches, group dialogues and more. These events are mostly free or price-scaled. Since early 2023, we’ve opened the doors to hundreds of artists, cooks, academics, poets, designers, students, government workers, retirees, teachers, and so on. That said, because the house is only three-metres-wide, we tend to organise modest-sized events, which allow for more hands-on encounters.
The impetus to start Magenta was based on my childhood dream to start a community library of sorts. I couldn’t afford many books when I was young, so the school library became my sanctuary of knowledge. We started the project by building a library in the front room to house the 2000+ books we’ve amassed throughout the years. I set up an Instagram account and listed some library hours through social and word of mouth. A week later, visitors started coming from across the country to leaf through our books. I realised that many readers were drawn to self-published books, unique topics, art books and precolonial literature. So I started scouring bookshops and global book fairs during my work travels to buy more distinctive titles to share.
Because I work freelance from home, I’d often schedule library hours during my lunch breaks. I found that some people liked hanging around the kitchen and courtyard to exchange stories with me, especially tourists. So I started making snacks for visitors. This then branched out into a coworking library, food programs in the kitchen, workshops in the back studio and communal meals in the courtyard. Ultimately, the dream is to make this home a platform for various passion and knowledge zones to collide and ferment.
After a quick survey with visitors, we extended the project by launching an online shop in December 2024. We began supplying items covering food cultures, experimental publications and heritage ventures from Asia and Australia. We stock repurposed textiles by ANTHILL Fabrics, handwoven homeware by AbanEco and Super Indays hand-stitched textiles by incarcerated women in Visayan prisons. There’s also amazing Australian publications like Illographo Press, un Magazine, Soft Stir, and Debris Magazine cast alongside independent titles from Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines and India. We maintain close bonds with our suppliers and artisans, which gives customers transparency about the impact of their purchases.
No.2
What was the inspiration behind setting up such a unique space as the Magenta House? Were there templates you’d seen on travels whether interstate or internationally that made you feel that a space like this was possible in Sydney?
Being raised by self-employed cooks and artists in the Philippines was a huge inspiration, for sure. My Lola (grandmother) ran a corner store bakery and catering business in our family home in Quezon City, so I became accustomed to serving strangers at our front gate and sharing leftover pandesal bread and fruitcakes with neighbours at nightfall. Also, my father is a spatially-driven artist, so he often transformed dilapidated spaces into art studios or make-shift showspaces. He taught me about the infinite possibilities of a four-cornered space. I’m only realising this now, but my family’s creative nous and work ethic rubbed off on me early. Between the ages of 8-10, I ran a book-exchange library in our neighbourhood and made newsletters and zines for classmates. For pocket money, I sold home-baked goods on the school bus. It was less about the earnings and more about making connections and re-circulating resources.
In 1996, I migrated to Yugambeh/Kombumerri lands/Gold Coast to live with my Singaporean-Chinese mother. She had been cut off from me for most of my childhood due to a messy divorce with my father. It was a challenging but fortifying time getting to ‘re-meet’ my mother when I was 15 years old. Like many Asian parents with inherited trauma, she struggled to show love and found nuanced ways to do so, like cooking food for me. It was then that I realised my comfort space was the kitchen. And so I began working in hospitality as a teen. After graduating high school, I did a gap year in the UK, working as a silver-service waitress by day and pouring pub beer at night. These oppositional worlds taught me a lot about anticipating the gradient needs of customers. And that food—whether it’s presented on an overly-scratched pub grub plate or gold-rimmed chinaware—deserves to be served with equal care.
After returning home to study Communications and Creative Arts at university on the Gold Coast, I managed commercial galleries and co-founded a few artist-run initiatives, including a creative precinct called Miami Marketta. These jobs meant I could marry my interests in art, food, entrepreneurship and social engagement. I think naivety played a huge part here, because I still don’t know how three young arts workers brokered a deal with a property developer to turn 14 warehouses into a multi-arts precinct. But somehow, we crowdsourced enough money to build a radio station, cafe, gallery, coworking space, performance venue and weekly markets. Today, the precinct is a commercialised entity, but back in 2011 it was a hotbed for independent businesses and experimental projects to take flight.
At age 27, I landed my first proper ‘office’ job with the City of Gold Coast—which gave me a regular income and superannuation for the first time! It was also a huge learning experience working with councillors to develop new funding programs for regional artists and educational workshops led by First Nations artists. I wouldn’t have had the chutzpah to start Magenta House if it weren’t for these formative few years. So I suppose you could say that this platform is a result of the various cut-outs of my life that are now montaged into this mutt-like ‘career’.
That said, collaboration is a colossal part of my practice. The opportunity to steer projects with creative entrepreneurs like Aubrey Abanico, Rosa Zerrudo, Marjorie Tenchavez and Anya Lim has been rewarding and I’m thankful for this circle of reciprocity. My good friend Nithya Nagarajan was also an early supporter of Magenta. In 2020, I came across this interview with Nithya in LIMINAL and was struck by her clarified leadership and tenacious dedication to manifest a just and kinder future for the arts. It crystallised my purpose when it came to setting up Magenta. I’m so thankful to be in communion with these women.
No.3
Together with your partner Mason Kimber, you are both ‘housekeepers’ of the space. The website describes Magenta House as a space that puts together a ‘curated program of workshops, supper clubs, talks, test kitchens, soirées and community library’. What has the space seen so far and have there been any memorable events or happenings you’d like to tell us about?
The house itself is architecturally unique and unlike other micro-terraces in the area. So these rooms are adaptable and continue to evolve as I speak. This has allowed us to carve some memorable moments. For example, we co-hosted a public dance workshop featuring Filipinx artist Bhenji Ra and Sitti Obeso, a Tausūg Pangalay master who travelled from Sulu Archipalago in the Philippines to share her ancestral craft. Christy Chua from The Slow Press also flew down from Singapore to work with me on a communal lunch using ingredients associated with colonial waste and ancestral-food preservation. Last year, Kris Aquino hosted book readings and a short-film screening of On Sundays We Play, which followed the lives of migrant domestic workers in Singapore. And most recently, I had a wicked time experimenting with food textures and colours by matching them to paint swatches for a Filipino workshop with artist-educator Gizelle Faye. We also welcomed artist Justine Youssef and her mother for a Lebanese vegetarian workshop; and Vietnamese chef Phoebe Tran staged an educational supper-club infused with produce sourced from the Hanoi highlands.
As for calling ourselves ‘housekeepers’, I feel that this term is more authentic than calling ourselves Directors or something. Because really, this project can only exist in unison with our collaborators and participants. It also asks the enduring question: how does one make and keep a home? We want to ground this with an active awareness that we are gathering in Redfern, which has had a long, symbolic history as a site for Aboriginal creativity, collectivising and knowledge sharing.
No.4
Based on how Magenta House is described as a ‘homespace’, I’m getting the impression that you and Mason live there as well. How do you navigate a work-life balance considering you’re both artists and arts workers in this regard?
Indeed, Mason and I live in this two-story house and we maintain public-private boundaries by running Magenta on the ground level only. Because I’m a WFH girlie, I often revolve the shop and library hours around my schedule. Mason also has an offsite studio, so he’s able to maintain his arts practice and work commitments away from my Magenta schemings! I find this to be essential for maintaining our relationship and friendship.
Broadly, I spent the first year of Magenta trialling programs with close friends to ensure that our visions were in line with space limitations and our energetic capacities. It’s important that this project remains malleable and joyful, not exhaustive. Otherwise why do it? The arts sector often normalises institutional burn-out, and after two decades of non-stop work, I was so ready to pursue a sustainable practice that broke away from this Groundhog Day grind. With Magenta, we can take risks and offer timelines that hopefully allow actors to move with realistic pace and intention. This is by no means an original or perfected formula, but it’s one that works for us.
As for opening up one’s home, people often ask us if it’s trippy to let strangers into our interior worlds. I suppose we’ve been lucky so far in that our projects tend to attract people who understand the reciprocity and courtesies that come with stepping into a private home. Also, I come from a culture that is built on generations of civic service and home-as-village ethics, so mutual trust is a major component of our work. Doing this project puts me in perpetual conversation with diaspora and migrant communities who are, like me, continuing to navigate a world predicated on systems that extinguish hope for marginalised voices. There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing strangers show up at our house and leave with newfound friends who look like them. And there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing children’s eyes light up as they forage through our library to learn the languages of their ancestors.
No.5
What are some future sneak peeks we can expect from Magenta House?
This month, I’m excited to partner with food journalist Candice Chung and chef Xinyi Lim to design a supper-club inspired by Candice’s new book Chinese Parents Don't Say I Love You. A micro-workshop for emerging writers will also be hosted by Candice in our library.
Elsewhere in the calendar, Filipinx community organisers Nawa Sybico and Argo Theoharis are staging a medicine-making workshop based on ancient Filipinx plant-based somatic practices. I’m also spending time co-developing regular events with scientists, dancers, cooks, healers, and refugee workers to explore decolonial practices through foodways, art, and architecture. People can subscribe to our newsletter to stay looped in. And to circle back to my answer about not burning out (lol!) I’ll be pausing Magenta operations in June. The plan is to return to the Philippines for rest and spend time with family, and to also conduct gentle-paced cultural research. Plus, stock up on more books for the library! Who knows how long Magenta House will run for. But we’ll keep the door propped open as long as people keep coming and projects stay succulent and manageable.
(Credit: Audrey Abanico)
Find out more
Magenta House is a gathering space that explores creative communing and knowledge-trading, founded and looked after by Mariam Arcilla and Mason Kimber.
Situated in a micro-home on Redfern, Gadigal land, Magenta House hosts feeding sessions, readings, talks, workshops, other programs throughout the year. We also collaborate with people and collectives by offering a site for ideas and conversations to ferment. Visiting hours are by appointment and during events, which remain intimate due to the domestic nature of our premises.
More information here.