Stephanie Comilang's Anthems brings OFW sci-fi documentaries to PHI Montreal

CBC Arts covers Filipina-Canadian artist Stephanie Comilang's Quebec debut Anthems at PHI in Montreal, a Sobey Art Award winner's largest exhibit to date on overseas Filipino workers, migration and speculative futures through 14 March 2027.

CBC Arts reported on 5 November that Filipina-Canadian artist Stephanie Comilang opened her Quebec debut exhibition Anthems at PHI in Montreal on 28 October, calling it the Sobey Art Award winner's largest exhibit to date.

According to CBC Arts, the show gathers about ten years of work across textiles, sculptures, photography, five science-fiction documentaries that blend reality and fiction, and a VR experience, and runs at PHI through 14 March 2027.

OFW stories and Paradise

CBC Arts described Come to Me, Paradise (Lumapit sa Akin, Paraiso), in which Comilang uses a drone to film female migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong on their weekly day off at the HSBC building gathering ground.

Comilang told CBC Arts that about 400,000 domestic workers use that building on days off for shelter from rain, wind and sun, and create cardboard private-public spaces there. The film shows Irish May Salinas, Lyra Ancheta Torbela and Romylyn Presto Sampaga uploading messages and videos to a drone-spirit named Paradise for loved ones in the Philippines.

First Québec presentation

PHI's exhibition page likewise frames Anthems as Comilang's most comprehensive exhibition to date and the first time her work is presented in Québec, curated by Cheryl Sim, with video installations, VR, textile works and 3D-printed objects exploring migration, technology and diasporic networks.

PHI's artist biography identifies Comilang as a Filipina-Canadian artist living and working in Berlin and notes she won the Sobey Art Award in 2019. CBC Arts quoted curator Cheryl Sim on the intimacy of the migrant stories in the show.

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