Stephanie Comilang

It All Makes Sense (2019), video and light installation

Comilang was the winner of the Sobey Art Award in 2019 with her piece titled, Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come to Me, Paradise) (2016).

Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come to Me, Paradise) (2016), is self-proclaimed "science-fiction documentary". Following three Filipina domestic workers, Irish May Salinas, Lyra Ancheta Torbela and Romylyn Presto Sampaga, who reside in Hong Kong, this 25.44 minute long film narrates the digital communication of these three women who relay their everyday lives of migratory work back to their homes and families. A drone camera that shot most of the videos footage has been titled Paradise, which is voiced by Comilang's mother, Emily Comilang. Paradise functions as both a narrator but also symbol through which the three protagonists digital communication of calling home is transmitted through. Identifications of being between, are meditated on in this piece through the use of technology, attention to time, and the protagonists as subjects of diaspora. Comilang demonstrates the complex ways in which these women must reconcile notions of space and home through the migratory experience.

Stephanie Comilang (born 1980) is a Filipina-Canadian artist and filmmaker working in Toronto and Berlin.

A video and light installation for Nuit Blanche recreating the first time Comilang saw Perfumed Nightmare (1977) by Kidlat Tahimik, an influential figure in Filippino independent cinema who sparked Comilang’s interest in cinema and set a precedent for what she could create. Like Comilang’s father, Kidlat Tahimik came from Baguio, an old American air base on Luzon island in the Philippines. Perfumed Nightmare, at the time was unlike anything Comilang had seen before, and being created by such a relatable figure, impacted Comilang’s creative practice.

Stephanie Comilang's parents immigrated from the Philippines to Canada in the 1970s to escape the political unrest of Ferdinand Marcos's dictatorship. Growing up in an immigrant household shaped her idea of home and has served as the starting point for much of her artwork. She graduated from the OCAD University in 2006 with a BFA in Integrated Media.

Yesterday, In the Years 1886 and 2017 (2017), consists of a two-channel 10-minute video and installation commissioned by Artspeak in Vancouver. Artspeak Editor, Danelle Ortiz, speaks on this piece stating, "While this film speaks to a specific place and particular people, the role of the disembodied narrator, casts a wider net of questions around mobility, a rearrangement of geographic concepts of centre/periphery, and the disruption of historical linearity and continuity."