Kermit Tesoro

I found this while unpacking. Both literally and otherwise.

Therapy has been doing what it does best: making me look at things I neatly stored away and labeled “later.” Turns out “later” includes a few years of work I never really processed, let alone shared. Due to a mix of procrastination, hedonism, neurodivergence, and frolicking.

For a long time, I treated Instagram like a waiting room I never intended to enter. Damn, I was at the peak of hectic when social media was shaping up, I was busy working, which felt more urgent than documenting. But there's something quietly radical about having a space where the work isn't limited to a 7 to 10-minute runway slot and a few polite claps.

This piece is from one of those collections I never properly revisited. I remember being very committed to the idea of a heart, not metaphorically, but literally. As in cut open, dissected, exposed, translated into leather, and to make it commercially digestible, a little zhuzh from the fringe or tassels. A slightly diluted take on Gunther von Hagens' plastinated bodies. I'm a fan of Buffalo Bill, I hope that's not problematic. I wasn't particularly trend-conscious, which may explain a few things.

Anyway, this is me belatedly giving it a bit more air.

Not everything needs to be understood immediately. I guess, it's still isn't. Some things just need to be seen again.

P.S. Images were lightly enhanced with AI for clarity (two were originally uploaded to Facebook around 2011), with minor background blurring. Importantly, NOTHING altered in the work itself.

Model: Xtina Cruz
Photos: Bia Catbagan, Stylebible, Bruce Casanova

My work "Mycornucopia" doing quite well on a pedestal for the first time, now on view.

It started during lockdown as a way to pass the time, more habit than ambition, no grand plan whatsoever, just something to work on while everything else was on pause.

I didn't really imagine it would end up in a gallery setting. Seriously, maybe just a tiny bit of hopeful thinking, that was it, but here we are. It still feels like the same piece to me, just in a slightly better company.

Glad to be part of this Berlin show with artists from across Germany with different backgrounds. Chemnitz and Munich came first, Berlin took its time. This one feels a little closer to home, metaphorically, and definitely, literally!

Very short notice. Berlin people, or people passing through. This is your cue!

Grateful to be part of this lineup, artists from different backgrounds and disciplines, all circling a similar idea.

Death: Yes? No? Maybe?

I'm showing my work (Mycornucopia). Drop in!

Not only am I a pretentious artist and a pretentious botanist. It seems I can now add "pretentious writer" to the résumé.
This is my first official write-up for a Euro-Filipino magazine: Roots & Wings, dedicated to all things basta Pinoy: arts, culture, lifestyle, and the in-betweens. My published rants and letters to Pulp Magazine and MTV ink (so antiquated, ang tanda ko na) of course, they don't count as literary milestones. The piece centers on a Pinoy restaurant in Berlin I return to whenever the craving for sinigang or lumpiang shanghai strikes. But more importantly, it traces the humble beginnings of a brave immigrant and the quiet persistence behind the plate. Have a read, please! Love you all!

Thanks to Ieth Inolino Idzerda for this opportunity, Tita Luz Bergersen for trusting, and PINOY Philippinische Spezialitäten for the warmest accommodation!

Not only am I a pretentious artist and a pretentious botanist. It seems I can now add "pretentious writer" to the résumé.
This is my first official write-up for a Euro-Filipino magazine dedicated to all things basta Pinoy: arts, culture, lifestyle, and the in-betweens. My published rants and letters to Pulp Magazine and MTV ink (so antiquated, ang tanda ko na) of course, they don't count as literary milestones. The piece centers on a Pinoy restaurant in Berlin I return to whenever the craving for sinigang or lumpiang shanghai strikes. But more importantly, it traces the humble beginnings of a brave immigrant and the quiet persistence behind the plate. Have a read, please! Love you all!

Thanks to Ieth Inolino Idzerda for this opportunity, Tita Luz Bergersen for trusting and PINOY Philippinische Spezialitäten for the warmest accommodation!

Berlin Boodle Fights and Mother-Daughter Bonds How one Filipino restaurant is rewriting the immigrant storyBy Kermit Tesoro, Berlin“Where was I born in Manila?” Rosaline turns to her mother, Rosalinda, mid-interview; a simple, unassuming question. And yet, like so many family stories, it had never been asked aloud. It's funny how the most ba...

Berlin's brutalism is direct and unadorned. The outfit isn't. Putting them in the same frame exposes what each one refuses to compromise. Testing how a "leucistic" piña textile behaves within a building that was designed to ignore anything soft. The dialogue isn't profound just material against mass, and form meeting form.

I'm lucky to be part of this exhibition in Amsterdam! Come join the conversation! 🐙🐙🐙

This dress was conceived alongside Polypodis, both shaped by cephalopod forms. The print though, is a kaleidoscopic translation of an octopus, and hopefully suggests both multiplicity and fluidity, mirrored against Mikado, a fabric traditionally bound to bridal rituals. Its beaded extremities trace the tension between the ceremonial and the marine, the ornamental and the organic.

It's a bag, trust me. Using it as a mask is also an option. Inspired by the headhunters of the Cordillera in the Philippines. Like many of my shoe designs, it's intentionally impractical. No handles; you carry it the way you'd carry a decapitated head, by the hair of excess fabric.

What fits inside? Only what could fit in an actual human skull: pocket-friendly vices, fun-sized secrets, or maybe the dehydrated brain of your enemy.

Neuroshell, 2025 (piña fabric, beads, polyvinyl chloride, glass)

Bauhaus Filipiniana: merging my appreciation for German modernism with the use of Philippine raw materials.

From my micro-collection Leucistic Observations, this particular piece is a tribute to the mysticism and cults in the Philippines, especially those that amalgamate the divinity of Catholicism with self-imposed purity, unknown sacrifices, esoteric rites, and the rituals passed down through generations until death.

Dare I say, we braved the Mercury retrograde during this guerrilla shoot. I was still feeling under the weather, and the skies were overcast...which, thankfully, worked in our favor.

Huge thanks to the sweetest couple (both professional DJs visiting Berlin): Sharla, who channeled her modeling experience so easily, and Adri, who played stage dad, behind-the-scenes guy, ocular scout, and somehow pulled out his inner stylist. Their time and generosity, and the luck of having all the locations to ourselves, felt like the universe was giving us permission to play and be productive at the same time.

We had so much fun, fleeting from an abandoned compound, to somewhere eerie, and finally to a lake where everything felt peachy keen. Meaning, more pictures to come, one look at a time.