Photo credit: hr2 kultur
In her work, Stephanie Comilang engages themes of labour, technology and postcolonial entanglement in the context of global mobility.
Artdaily reports that she combined documentary footage, fictional elements and personal narratives. She describes her films as “science fiction documents”.
In “Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso” (Come to Me, Paradise) (2017, 26 min), the urban space of Hong Kong is imagined from the perspective of Filipina migrant women. The film is narrated by Paraiso, a spirit embodied by a drone, who speaks of displacement, isolation and the search for meaning. On Sundays, thousands of women gather in the financial district, asserting a temporary space of care, community and self-determination beyond the households in which they work and live. This collective presence allows Paraiso to fulfil its task: transmitting the women’s images, voices and messages across distance. Bringing together dystopian architecture, digital technologies and intimate gestures, the film offers a layered reflection on migration, public space and connectedness.
“Search for life I” (2024, 20min) is a visual exploration of global mobility. The work traces historical shipping routes that date back to the colononization of the Philippines and are now used by the global container trade. At its centre are the lived realities of former Filipino seafarers: the artist Joar Songcuya and the florist Michael John Diaz. Their biographies are interwoven with the voices of the historian Guadalupe Pinzon Rios and the lepidopterist Jade Aster T Badon. The monarch butterfly functions as a connecting motif, its long migration becoming a metaphor for transformation and resilience across generations. Interlacing personal narratives with possible imagery, the work reflects on diaspora, collective memory and belonging.
Stephanie Comilang was born in Toronto in 1980. She is a Filipino-Canadian artist based in Berlin. She studied at the Ontario College of Art & Design. Recent solo exhibitions include presentations at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa and the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
