Ghost: 2561
Curated by Korakrit Arunanondchai
Cartel Artspace, Bangkok
11 – 28 October 2018
Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come to Me, Paradise), a self-described “science fiction documentary,” chronicles the lives of three Filipina domestic workers — Irish May Salinas, Lyra Ancheta Torbela and Romylyn Presto Sampaga — in Hong Kong. The video tells a story about the women’s ritual of digitally transmitting their stories and memories back to the Philippines at the end of each work week. Much of its footage comes from a drone called “Paradise,” who not only serves as the film’s poetically-inclined narrator, but also as the vessel through which the community of Filipina domestic workers transmit their messages back home. Voiced by the artist’s mother Emily Comilang, who migrated to Canada from the Philippines in the 70s, Paradise’s character enacts and embodies a fluid constellation of themes including community, diaspora and memory. She mediates and symbolizes the workers’ idea of paradise as home, positioned as a middle ground between the Philippines and Hong Kong, neither fully here nor there.