It All Makes Sense
Stephanie Comilang
October 5 — 13, 2019
Floor 1
Stephanie Comilang creates a video and light installation for Nuit Blanche. It All Makes Sense recreates a memory of the first time Comilang saw Perfumed Nightmare by Kidlat Tahimik — a figure who, like Comilang’s father, comes from Baguio, a mountain city and old American airbase in the Philippines. This teen moment in a basement changed Comilang’s perspective on life, and will transform MOCA’s entrance hall October 5 – 13, 2019.
Comilang is a contributing artist to the concurrent exhibition Age of You (Sept 5, 2019 – Jan 5, 2020) curated by Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
“Age of You is about you. And how contemporary forces shaping everyday life are shaping what you are. As the world shifts from fossil to digital capitalism, you’ve become that precious new resource: data. In this process, a large part of you is extracted from you. An ever-larger part of you now exists everywhere and nowhere, independently of your five senses. You’re increasingly imaginary, invisible and immortal. There’s never been anything like this before. Do we need a new word to describe this thing that individuality is morphing into? You’re becoming your Extreme Self.”
Stephanie Comilang is an artist based in both Toronto and Berlin. She received her BFA from Ontario College of Art & Design. Her documentary-based works create narratives that look at how our understandings of mobility, capital and labour on a global scale are shaped through various cultural and social factors. Comilang’s science-fiction documentary Come to Me, Paradise (2017) raises questions around modern isolation, economic migration and the role of public space in both urban and digital forms. Comilang is one of the finalists for the 2019 Sobey Art Award.