Silverlens is pleased to announce Piña, Why is the Sky Blue?, a collaborative exhibition by Stephanie Comilang and Simon Speiser, opening 26 April 2024.

Previously exhibited in major institutions including the Tate Modern in London, UK and Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Canada, Piña, Why is the Sky Blue? is an affirming techno-feminist vision of a future in which ancestral knowledge and new technologies converge. The centerpiece of the exhibition is a video/virtual-reality installation of the same title, a speculative documentary that narrates the story of a spiritual medium known as Piña. As a form of artificial intelligence, Piña is able to receive and collect inherited knowledge, messages, and dreams from people around the world in order to secure their survival.

Piña, Why is the Sky Blue? features footage shot in the Philippines and Ecuador, where the artists have family histories. Its video component includes interviews with activists and healers from local organizations such as the Indigenous feminist collective Cyber Amazonas in Puyo, and Las Martinas de Piedras Negras in Quito, both in Ecuador; as well as with a shaman or Babaylan, in Palawan, Philippines. These are interspersed with footage of agricultural landscapes, abandoned buildings amid lush forests, and documentation of ritual activities carried out by the interviewees. Through an emphasis on matriarchal lineages and their modes of knowledge transmission, the artists consider how precolonial ways of being have survived into the present in spite of their ongoing violent oppression.

In addition to the installation, the exhibition features textile collages made of woven pineapple-cloth swatches sewn together by hand. One of the first commodities from the socalled New World, pineapple (piña) was introduced to the Philippines by Spanish colonialists, where it was grown for the European luxury market as well as used locally as food and fiber. On the individual squares, Comilang and Speiser have 3D-printed an amalgamation of traditional Ecuadorian and Filipino patterns along with new designs generated either by the artists or by a self-learning algorithm. Via the resulting amalgam of various patterns, techniques, and traditions, the material becomes a carrier of information, one that connects the physical and virtual worlds as well as the past and present. 

Piña, Why is the Sky Blue? runs through 25 May 2024 at Silverlens Manila.

For a seamless experience during Saturdays, we recommend guests register for the VR experience through this form.

Stephanie Comilang (b.1980, Toronto, Canada) is an artist living and working in Berlin. 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. Her work has been shown at the Tate Modern, Hamburger Bahnhof, Tai Kwun Hong Kong, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Julia Stoschek Collection, and Haus der Kunst. She was awarded the 2019 Sobey Art Award, Canada’s most prestigious art prize for artists 40 years and younger.

Simon Speiser (b.1988, Regensburg, Germany) is an artist who conjures fictional concepts that merge nature with technology. Placing a variety of media and disciplines in dialogue with one another—ranging from writing, sculpture, and printing to video and VR installations—Speiser’s work expands the possibilities between art and science fiction. He has exhibited at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, MMK Frankfurt, CAC Quito, Oracle Berlin, Croy Nielsen, MMCA Seoul, and Robert Grunenberg Berlin, among others.