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 centrepiece 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 organisations 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.
Piña, Why is the Sky Blue? will run from 26 April to 25 May 2024 at Silverlens Manila, with an opening reception on 26 April, 4 – 7 PM. A walkthrough and demo with the artists will precede the opening reception at 4 PM.
Press release courtesy SILVERLENS.
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