Search for Life
BaldSoonCourtesy Chertlüdde
Stephanie ComilangSearch for LifeChertLüdde, BerlinOpening reception: Thursday, 10 September 2026 / 6 – 10 pm11 September – 24 October 2026 – ChertLüdde
On the occasion of Berlin Art Week, ChertLüdde presents
a two-channel video installation projected onto a beaded curtain that transforms the gallery into an immersive underwater environment, where shifting light and shadow are cast over a variety of sculptures.
Moving across multiple geographies and communities,
commissioned by TBA21, Sharjah Art Foundation and The Vega Foundation, traces the intertwined histories of the pearl as both material commodity and speculative protagonist. Assuming the role of narrator, the pearl connects the stories of Badjao (Sama-Bajau) Indigenous pearl divers in the Philippine Archipelago, pearl farmers in China, and a second-generation Emirati-Filipina K-Pop dancer living in Dubai, where natural pearl diving was the region’s primary source of wealth before the discovery of oil. Through these intersecting narratives, the work explores migration, labor, diaspora, and technology, continuing Comilang’s distinct practice of “sci-fi documentaries”.
Portrait of Stephanie Comilang, Berlin, 2026, © Julia Sellmann for the Financial Times
(1980, Toronto, Canada) is a Filipina-Canadian artist living and working between Toronto and Berlin. She graduated with a BA from the Ontario College of Art & Design University.
With a focus on the migrant experience, Comilang considers the growing disparity between the human and the global. Through a genre she terms “sci-fi documentary,” Comilang creates films whose narratives are driven by multiple voices and points of view to consider how culture and society engage with such salient aspects of the globalized world as mobility, capital and labor.
Earlier iterations of Stephanie Comilang’s film
, a London-based project space for Asian and Asian diasporic contemporary art. In 2027, she will also be exhibiting at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Bern Kunsthalle.