Tiffany Sia: Phantasmatic Screens

Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean presents Phantasmatic Screens, an exhibition by New York-based artist and filmmaker Tiffany Sia (born 1988, Hong Kong), winner of the Baloise Art Prize 2024.

Tiffany Sia’s provocative video sculptures The Sojourn (2023) and Antipodes III (2024) compose Phantasmatic Screens, an exhibition about imagery of territory and notions of memory in exile. Through landscape film, the artist engages with Edward Said’s concept of imaginative geographies, in which space is actively constructed through representation. This framework enables distant subjects – such as those in exile – to relate to places they no longer inhabit through symbolic, politicised and affectively charged lenses. Both installation and cinematic essay, The Sojourn is projected onto the undulating surface of a polyester curtain, transforming the film into a moving sculpture; Antipodes III uses a suspended rear-view mirror as a screen, symbolically merging visions of the past and the present. These setups subtly disrupt the viewer’s habits as spectators and open new avenues for interpretation.

In The Sojourn, Sia traverses Taiwan following the footsteps of filmmaker King Hu, a figure in wuxia cinema (sword films), who fled Beijing in 1949. The film revisits the shooting locations of the legendary Dragon Inn (1967), guided by the memories of its protagonist, actor Shih Chun. Part road movie, part political meditation, the work addresses issues of cultural transmission and territorial sovereignty. It culminates with a meeting with Pilin Yapu, an Atayal filmmaker and founder of Taiwan's first indigenous elementary school. Rejecting traditional subtitles, Sia invites the viewer to become more active in listening to the expressiveness of language and dialects as sound.

Antipodes III continues this reflection through an inverted staging of the landscape: an image projected onto a rewired rear-view mirror, broadcasting a live stream recording of the militarised yet idyllic, emptied landscapes of Kinmen. Here, Sia draws inspiration from Marshall McLuhan – ‘We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.’ – highlighting the tension between nostalgia and the suspended, anticipatory state of time; the present in the process of becoming.

Sia's works align with Mudam’s dedication to platforming emerging artists. She is the ninth artist to enter the Mudam Collection thanks to the partnership established in 2015 with the Baloise Art Prize, reaffirming the museum's commitment to international practices focused on moving image and new technology.

Curators Marie-Noëlle Farcy assisted by Vanessa Lecomte