In the IBB Video Space

Artists

Stephanie Comilang

Press release

In her work, Stephanie Comilang engages themes of labour, technology and postcolonial entanglement in the context of global mobility. Combining documentary footage, fictional elements and personal narratives, she describes her films as “science fiction documentaries”.

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, 20 min.) is a visual exploration of global mobility. The work traces historical shipping routes that date back to the colonisation 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 Díaz. Their biographies are interwoven with the voices of the historian Guadalupe Pinzón Ríos 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 poetic imagery, the work reflects on diaspora, collective memory and belonging.

The artist
Stephanie Comilang (born 1980, Toronto) 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.