# Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya: Tender Commons

**URL:** <https://community.underminingnormal.com/t/amanda-phingbodhipakkiya-tender-commons/299>\
**Category:** people should be seeing more art\
**Tags:** womens-work, tenderness, art\
**Created:** [November 1, 2025, 12:50am UTC](https://community.underminingnormal.com/t/amanda-phingbodhipakkiya-tender-commons/299 "2025-11-01T00:50:57Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![alex](https://community.underminingnormal.com/user_avatar/community.underminingnormal.com/alex/32/24_2.png) [@alex](https://community.underminingnormal.com/u/alex)\
**Post date:** [November 1, 2025, 12:50am UTC](https://community.underminingnormal.com/t/amanda-phingbodhipakkiya-tender-commons/299/1 "2025-11-01T00:50:57Z")

</div>

# Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya: Tender Commons

MoMA [Creativity Lab](https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5863), NYC, October 25th, 2025

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> Explore softness as a way to make and experience art. This participatory textile installation draws on the artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya’s personal connection to the Southeast Asian tradition of wrapping food and prayers into gentle bundles.

### Soft Sculpture Workshop: Hand Embroidery

We learned two stitches, and made a soft sculpture to add to the wall.

Amanda told us about when she was in Thailand, visiting her ancestral home, the salt flats quietly shimmering tenderness, and read poetry to us. She and a friend taught us the running stitch and the French knot.

 ![2025-10-25 Soft Sculpture Workshop - Hand Embroidery 0001](https://community.underminingnormal.com/uploads/default/original/1X/68670d5c2fac15c001749708c00f2177eb8e0242.jpeg)

It was nourishing —

to be inside a container of poetry and care and history, moving blue thread through blue fabric, seated at tables with everyone doing their thing, talking, not talking, unhurried;

 ![2025-10-25 Soft Sculpture Workshop - Hand Embroidery 0006](https://community.underminingnormal.com/uploads/default/original/1X/9005130c9cfd944eb7004b3278228210e306fc25.jpeg)

to receive instructions slowly, in phases, to not know;

 ![2025-10-25 Soft Sculpture Workshop - Hand Embroidery 0011](https://community.underminingnormal.com/uploads/default/original/1X/f62c39ddc094d2ac410cc4ff1d1a50722e9312dd.jpeg)

to make something that took the shape of a human heart.

 ![2025-10-25 Soft Sculpture Workshop - Hand Embroidery 0014](https://community.underminingnormal.com/uploads/default/original/1X/cb2d032bb8f511d370c798cb67f4468afe6a422d.jpeg)

I had no idea I was heading there until I arrived, had not remembered that such places existed.

 ![2025-10-25 Soft Sculpture Workshop - Hand Embroidery 0008](https://community.underminingnormal.com/uploads/default/original/1X/0ec50288777c38c5473a8d6cbc052cc4012e924d.jpeg)

 ![2025-10-25 Soft Sculpture Workshop - Hand Embroidery 0009](https://community.underminingnormal.com/uploads/default/original/1X/485165b1ee3aa03e6223ffdf835b7f1d3aae1bbf.jpeg)

We used toggle buttons to attach them to the wall..

 ![2025-10-25 Soft Sculpture Workshop - Hand Embroidery 0015](https://community.underminingnormal.com/uploads/default/original/1X/c0fed9c184465d647d1fb12df11bf6c5521b31d5.jpeg)

It was liberating to contribute and not carry anything out.

 ![2025-10-25 Soft Sculpture Workshop - Hand Embroidery 0016](https://community.underminingnormal.com/uploads/default/original/1X/8940eb7eeb0f0db47d2ca260372fd3119f508d8d.jpeg)

* * *

[Softness workshops at the MoMA Creativity Lab](https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5863) through Mar 15, 2026.

> Participation is open to all, with no previous experience or ability necessary. Materials will be provided.