Stephanie Comilang: Search for Life

Stephanie Comilang: Search for Life is an immersive moving-image adventure and a profound reflection on history and the interconnectedness of different life forms. The exhibition features a diptych comprised of two multi-channel video installations, Search for Life I (2024) and Search for Life ll (2025)—Comilang’s most ambitious project to date.

Search for Life l, the first work in the diptych, traces shipping routes used by Spanish conquistadors following the colonization of the Philippines, underlining the extraordinary scope of today’s global maritime cargo movements as well as the vital role of Filipino seafarers. The stories are told through the experiences and voices of various characters including two former Filipino seafarers, a historian, a scientist, a child and a monarch butterfly—all woven together to narrate intertwined stories, timelines and migratory experiences.

The second work in the diptych, Search for Life II, explores themes of migration, labour, diaspora and technology through the history and industrialization of pearl diving in the Persian Gulf, the Philippines and China. A pearl is a rarity, caused by a mollusc’s defensive accumulation of calcium within its shell. In Search for Life II, the pearl is both an object of currency and a speculative subject, connecting global cultures and collapsing past and future through desire, exchange, glamour and evolving technology.