Stephanie Comilang, still from Search for Life II, 2025. Video, colour, sound, 18:22. Courtesy the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto. Search for Life is a work in the form of a diptych commissioned by TBA21, Sharjah Art Foundation, and The Vega Foundation. Collection of The Vega Foundation.

Search for Life II is the second work in a diptych that 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 a currency object and speculative subject, connecting global cultures and collapsing past and future narratives through desire, exchange, glamour, and evolving technology.

Prior to the twentieth century, obtaining pearls was highly labour intensive, as free-divers would make risky descents to harvest vast quantities of oysters by hand, lending value and prestige to the iridescent stone. In the southwest of Mindanao, the second largest island in the Philippines, communities of predominantly Indigenous and Muslim-Filipino people have lived on the water for centuries, making their livelihoods by sea farming and harvesting pearls. In the Gulf states, pearling was the dominant economy throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, prior to the development of the oil industry. In China, the earliest recorded history of cultured pearls is from the Song Dynasty (960–1279 AD). With the emergence of new technologies, pearl manufacturing has expanded into a massive global market.

The character in Search for Life II leads viewers on a journey through vast geographies and temporalities, between embodied memories of underwater labour and speculative futures of ecologically-managed luxury goods. Filmed from multiple perspectives using drone and iPhone cameras, as well as Meta’s POV smart glasses, the character shares an aesthetic with the TikTok accounts of farmers, retailers, and influencers selling pearls and jewellery in China. Search for Life II immerses viewers in Comilang’s signature form of documentary science fiction, weaving together stories from sites historically associated with pearl diving, dispatches from live-streamed from Chinese pearl markets, and a musical soundtrack emphasizing the significance of song for those working at sea and the diasporic nature of life in the Gulf states.

Related