STEPHANIE COMILANG: Yesterday, In The Years 1886 and 2017

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Artspeak Gallery

Opening Friday, June 9, 8pm

Screening and artist talk: Saturday June 10, 2pm

Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come to Me, Paradise), 2016, 25min 46sec

Sunburned flesh 

We enter a new space

I clip into the vestibule and right away

I am ash baked

These storybook villas still dream behind shutters

Their balconies fine as hand- made lace

I am the colour of burnt pineapple, lemon, mango

Yesterday, In The Years 1886 and 2017 is a two-channel video projection installation. The two protagonists José Rizal and Lourdes Lareza Müller occupy a channel each; projected adjacent to one another, they inhabit the same space while remaining distinctly separate. José Rizal (1861-1896) was a Filipino nationalist, considered a national hero for his advocacy and thinking that led to the Philippine revolution against Spanish rule. While he worked as an ophthalmologist he was well known for his literary works. While living in Berlin he completed his book Noli Me Tángere (Touch Me Not) in 1887, a book that many have credited for its proposition of nationalism and resistance to Spanish colonial rule through its formulation of the idea of an ‘imagined community’ in the Philippines. Lourdes Lareza Müller is the other protagonist in Yesterday, In The Years 1886 and 2017. Having migrated to Germany in 1968, she worked as an archivist at one of Europe’s largest libraries, Berlin’s Staatsbibliotek, for 28 years.