Fil-Canadian filmmaker wins $100K top art prize

Stephanie Comilang won the annual Sobey prize for Canadian artists aged 40 years or younger. FACEBOOK

TORONTO – Filipino Canadian filmmaker Stephanie Comilang was named winner of Canada’s top contemporary art prize, the C$100,000 Sobey Art Award.

In its decision, the Sobey jury said of Comilang’s work: “Through what she calls science-fiction documentaries, Comilang speaks to how the world is increasingly experienced through technology. By using the point of view of a drone, the artist shows how communities, made up of mainly migrant women, carve out space in locations that are never really home.”

The annual prize goes to a Canadian artist aged 40 years or younger.

From a work by Stephanie Comilang, Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come To Me, Paradise) (still), 2016. Video, 26 minutes. Courtesy the artist.

Comilang expressed financial relief at receiving the annual price reserved for Canadian artists 40 years old or younger, noting to The Art Newspaper that she makes a second home in Berlin, where “it’s cheaper.”

Comilang’s parents escaped the Marcos dictatorship in the 1970s by immigrating to Canada. She graduated from Toronto’s Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCAD), in 2007.

Each of the four Sobey runners-up—Nicolas Grenier (Québec), Kablusiak (the Prairies and North), Anne Low (the West Coast and Yukon) and D’Arcy Wilson (the Atlantic)— will also receive C$25,000.