Photo credit: Leroy Schulz
OCAD U congratulates artist and alum Stephanie Comilang on her first institutional solo exhibition at the JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION (JSC) Berlin with Simon Speiser!
Piña, Why is the Sky Blue? centres around a video/virtual reality installation of the same title, a speculative documentary that narrates the story of a spiritual medium known as Piña. JSC describes it as “an affirming techno-feminist vision of a future in which ancestral knowledge and new technologies converge.”
Stephanie Comilang & Simon Speiser, Piña, Why is the Sky Blue?, 2021, Video/Virtual Reality Installation, color, sound. Video still. Courtesy of the artists and JSC Berlin.
The exhibition features footage shot in the Philippines and Ecuador, where Comilang and Speiser, respectively, have family histories.
“When I first saw Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser’s VR/video installation Piña,Why is the Sky Blue? during a studio visit, I knew immediately we had to show it at the Julia Stoschek Foundation,” says curator Lisa Long.
“The questions asked by the protagonists but also by the figure of Piña are urgent ones about our survival, our communities, the climate, and the uses of technology, to just name a few.”
Long was appointed curator at the JSC Berlin in 2020, one of the world’s most comprehensive private collections of time-based art, which features more than 870 multimedia artworks by 290 artists from around the world. Long highlights Comilang and Speiser’s exhibition as a great and layered work.
“There are so many entry points and layers that enable you to see things from a different angle, which happens quite literally in the VR component where you have 360° vision,” she expands. “For me, this multiplicity defines a great artwork and I’m very happy that it is also a part of the JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION.”
Comilang, who won the prestigious Sobey Art Award in 2019, is an alum of OCAD U’s Integrated Media program (2006). Her work has since been shown at Transmediale Berlin, Ghost:2561 Bangkok Video & Performance Triennale, Hamburger Bahnhof, Tai Kwun Hong Kong, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Asia Art Archive in America, New York.
In a 2019 interview with The Art Newspaper, Comilang recognized OCAD U for encouraging her to realize her dreams: “At OCAD U, it was knowing that you could make art,” Comilang said. “As a kid growing up, you’re not really sure.”
Piña, Why is the Sky Blue? was on until Dec. 4 at JSC Berlin.