Stephanie Comilang
How to Make a Painting from Memory

In the diasporic imagination, a home is a site of both belonging and displacement, an architectural vessel in which the triangulations of memories, ceremonies, and familial relations form a foundation that roots one to the land. Works of art and literature informed by the diaspora adopt a migratory lens that expresses a yearning for a long-awaited return as they conjure memories of homes left behind. These poetic entanglements are themes reimagined in Filipina-Canadian artist Stephanie Comilang’s recent exhibition How to Make a Painting from Memory

Belonging is a slippery concept — it is a response to and an affirmation of the mutable concept of the home. At the heart of the exhibition was Comilang’s Spirit House (Phra Phum) series (2022), a group of maquettes that she affectionately calls “architectures of belonging.” Five of them are 3D-printed, made to look like speculative futuristic domiciles, and a single handmade one resembles a traditional Filipino home. These enigmatic models were inspired by spirit houses — shrines for protective land deities and ancestors across Southeast Asia — and interviews with Thai women living in Berlin who recounted memories and sketched layouts of their family homes in Thailand. Through the lens of the diaspora, the video How to Make a Painting from Memory (2022)converged spiritual, familial, and communal ties between the women and the ever-shifting terrains of placemaking. Comilang deploys geospatial technologies as a conduit of connection, linking these memories to sites in Thailand; the drone-captured footage floats above the land like a spirit returning home.