Jamila Shih

Contact:
jay.0threee [at] gmail dot com

Jamila Shih is a Filipino-Canadian painter and illustrator living in Toronto, Canada. Their work primarily features character illustration, sequential art, and paintings. They are a graduate of Humber Polytechnic’s Visual and Digital Arts program. They were a part of the In-Situ Multi Arts Festival in 2024 held in the Small Arms Inspection Building, and the group exhibition Decagram at Humber Art Galleries. Their personal works are in a variety of mediums, namely: oil, graphite, acrylic, and digital. They are currently working on pushing themself using these mediums. In future projects they will develop their storytelling ability through visual art.

I create art because I want to communicate my ideas and feelings by flinging them out of myself. Why bother trying to speak when I can show you some lines on a page and you can interpret that as you wish? In fact, I think my art is clearer to people than my explicit words. I think it captures the feelings of aimlessness and confusion. I think to myself, ‘Surely no one else feels this awful? This alone and lost?’ But I believe they do. I don’t know how to live with that weird feeling yet, but I want to try to show that to others: that they are not alone with their feelings of unbelonging.There are some people very comfortable with a paintbrush in their hand, or a pencil. I am the complete opposite. Every part of my process is intentionally awkward and challenging. I need to forcibly eject these things from inside me, so with art as my prime method of communication—whether it’s smooth talking or spitting and coughing—I let that come out in my work, in whatever way it needs to escape from me.Within my works in this exhibition, I chose to show feelings I associate with being a child. I evoke a sense of insignificance, having no agency, being alone when among others. I believe these feelings to be especially prevalent among those close to me in age (me being 21 years old), due to the disconnect from the outside world during the pandemic, and even in general as we are in a traditional transitional period in our lives.

Education
September 2023 - April 2025
Humber Polytechnic, Toronto - Visual and Digital Arts DiplomaExhibitions
March 2024
InSitu Multi-Arts Festival, Small Arms Inspection Building, Mississauga, Canada
April 2025
Decagram Group Exhibition, Humber Art Galleries, Toronto, CanadaWorks
Private Commission - Toronto, Canada
Collaborative Project - New South Wales, AustraliaSkills
Clip Studio Paint, Adobe Photoshop, oil painting, acrylic painting