| Screenings followed by public talks | |
| Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come to Me, Paradise) a film by Stephanie Comilang Screening in Brooklyn Friday, August 5, 2016, 7 pm Asia Art Archive in America 43 Remsen Street Brooklyn, NY RSVP here with Stephanie Comilang via Skype Ingrid Pui Yee Chu, Public Programs Curator, Asia Art Archive and Jennifer Davis, Rear View (Projects) This event is co-organized by Asia Art Archive in America and apexart. Screening in Hong Kong Sunday, July 3, 2016, 2 pm The Central Oasis Gallery Central Market Public Passage 2/F 80 Des Voeux Road Central, Hong Kong with Stephanie Comilang In conjunction with apexart Franchise exhibition How to Make Space, organized by Rear View (Projects) (Jennifer Davis and Su-Ying Lee). Filmed in part with a drone camera, Comilang's video Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come to Me, Paradise) gives the viewer an unusual and striking vantage point of both Hong Kong and the day-to-day lives of women from the Philippines who have migrated to Hong Kong for domestic work. |
Stephanie Comilang, Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come to Me, Paradise), 2016, 25:46 minutes (still) Music: Why Be, Sky H1, Elysia Crampton / Cinematographer: Iris Ng |
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Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come to Me, Paradise) is a science fiction documentary by Stephanie Comilang that uses the backdrop of Hong Kong and the various ways in which Filipina migrant workers occupy Central on Sundays. The film is narrated from the perspective of Paraiso, a ghost played by a drone who speaks of the isolation from being uprooted and thrown into a new place. Paraiso’s reprieve comes when she is finally able to interact with the women and feel her purpose, which is to transmit their vlogs, photos, and messages back home. During the week she is forced back into isolation and is left in an existential rut.
On Sundays, Central becomes a pivotal place for Paraiso and the three protagonists as thousands congregate to create a space of female care-giving, away from their employers' homes where they live and work full time. From early morning to night, the women occupy these spaces normally used for finance and banking into female care-giving spaces where they relax over food, drinks, manicures, prayer, and dance. Only when the women gather en masse is the signal strong enough to summon Paraiso to them for download. Lumapit sa Akin, Paraiso uses Hong Kong’s dystopian maze like structures that the Filipina migrants re-imagine and focuses on the beauty of care-giving but also explores how technology is used as a pivotal way for the women to connect - to each other but also to loved ones. Raising questions around modern isolation, economic migration and the role of public space in both urban and digital forms, the film transcends its various component parts to offer a startling commentary on the present, from the point of view of the future. Ingrid Pui Yee Chu is Public Programs Curator at Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong. A Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College graduate, she has experience at leading international museums and non-profit art organizations including Creative Time, The Noguchi Museum, The Power Plant, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 2008 she co-founded the New York non-profit commissioning organization Forever & Today, Inc. with fellow Co-Director & Curator Savannah Gorton. Her writing has appeared in Afterall, frieze, Kaleidoscope/Kaleidoscope Asia, Performa Magazine, TimeOut New York, Walker Art Center Magazine, and Yishu among other international print and online publications, and in 2012 she was a Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program Art Writing Workshop participant. Chu is currently co-organizing an independent art publishing conference and book fair (Dec. 10–11, 2016) as part of the 2016 Taipei Biennial, Gestures and Archives of the Present, Genealogies of the Future. Stephanie Comilang is a Filipina-Canadian, documentary-based filmmaker. She studied fine arts and media at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Her practice involves collaboration and interviews, as well as cultural diaspora. Comilang’s documentary work includes Children of the King, about children of Elvis impersonators, and Flirting: Kyoto, about flirting practices in Kyoto, Japan, which was made in residence at the Kyoto Art Centre. Her works have been screened internationally at film festivals and art institutions, including the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, the Reel Asian Film Festival, and the Banff Centre. Rear View (Projects) is Jennifer Davis, an architect, and Su-Ying Lee, a contemporary art curator. Both a curatorial collective and an itinerant site for art, they experiment with unconventional platforms to mobilize new interactions between art, place, and audiences. Recent exhibitions include Flipping Properties, an installation commissioned for a Toronto Laneway designed by architect Jimenez Lai with Bureau Spectacular. Jennifer Davis practices architecture and independent curating in Toronto, Canada. Her projects investigate the political and social factors that shape the built environment. Davis graduated with a Master of Architecture (2011) from the University of Toronto and participated in Independent Curators International’s curatorial intensive program entitled Curating Beyond Exhibition Making (2012). In the field of architecture she has received numerous awards including the Power Corporation of Canada Award (2010) from the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and has contributed to publications such as Edge Condition (UK) and Canadian Architect. Davis’ exhibition making experience includes positions such as Exhibition Development Assistant for the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 53rd International Art Exhibition, 2009. She provided architectural consultation and programming for TBD, the Fall 2014 show at the Museum for Contemporary Canadian Art curated by Su-Ying Lee. Su-Ying Lee is an independent curator whose projects often take place outside of the traditional gallery platform. Lee is interested in employing the role of curator as a co-conspirator, accomplice and active agent. She has also worked institutionally, including positions as Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA) and Art Gallery of Mississauga, and Curator-in-Residence at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery. Recent projects include Céline Condorelli’s (UK) The Company We Keep (2013-2014), an installation at the University of Toronto’s Hart House, and Your Disease, Our Delicacy (cuitlachoche), a year long (2012-2013) residency and garden installation at Hart House by Ron Benner (CA). Currently touring across Canada, the project Video Store, begun in 2010 (co-curated with Suzanne Carte), gives audiences unprecedented access to artists’ videos requesting only a pay-what-you-want ‘rental’ fee. Lee’s exhibition titled TBD (Sep 6-Oct 26, 2014), at MOCCA, was begun as an inquiry into the definition of a museum/contemporary art gallery. These events are free and open to the public. apexart's exhibitions and public programs are supported in part by the Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Degenstein Foundation, The Greenwich Collection Ltd., Affirmation Arts Fund, the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, and with public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. How to Make Space is funded in part by Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies. Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come to Me, Paradise) was made possible by the support of the Ontario Arts Council. |
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