Stephanie Comilang's sci-fi documentaries explore migration through non-human perspectives

Filipino-Canadian artist Stephanie Comilang blends documentary with speculative fiction, giving voice to butterflies, pearls, and drones to examine migration, labor, and global commodity flows. Her film 'Search for Life II' (2025), tracing the pearl industry across the Philippines, China, and the Gulf, premiered at the Sharjah Biennial as a two-channel installation partly projected onto imitation pearls. A series of beaded curtains depicting film stills will be shown at Daniel Faria Gallery's booth at Frieze New York (May 13-17). Comilang's earlier works include 'Search for Life I' (2024), which juxtaposes a monarch butterfly's migration with Filipino seafarers' experiences; 'Piña, Why is the Sky Blue?' (2021), co-created with Simon Speiser, using pineapple history to explore AI and colonialism; and 'Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come to Me, Paradise)' (2016), narrated by a drone, featuring Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong, currently screening at Berlinische Galerie (until June 1). Born in Toronto in 1980 to parents who fled the Marcos dictatorship, Comilang's personal history informs her focus on diaspora and identity. Her upcoming project with Speiser examines cacao cultivation and migration near the Mexico-US border. Comilang describes her films as 'science-fiction documentaries,' using non-human narrators to expand storytelling beyond a single human perspective.