Shu Lea Cheang: KI$$ KI$$

KI$$ KI$$ is the first institutional survey exhibition of artist Shu Lea Cheang (b. 1954). Since the 1990s, the Taiwanese American artist’s films, installations and performances—which often develop over several years—have challenged and transformed the understanding of digital technologies.

After moving to New York in the 1980s, Cheang built up contact with the independent film scene and began experimenting with the technologies of video, broadcast, TV and networking. She had a defining role in the still-emergent net art, with her project BRANDON (1998–99) becoming the first piece of internet art to be commissioned by a museum—in this case, New York’s Guggenheim—and included in its permanent collection. Cheang’s work also anticipated the emergence of alternative currencies, explored the “gamification” of social processes and investigated biotechnologies.

In 2019, the artist represented Taiwan at the Venice Biennale with the mixed-media installation 3x3x6. She also established her own film genre, which she calls Scifi New Queer Cinema. She has made four feature films to date, most recently UKI (2023), which has been shown at MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. In 2024, Cheang was awarded the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Award.

Taking her groundbreaking debut feature film Fresh Kill (1994) as a starting point for her show, the exhibition gathers and recontextualises works from the past three decades. At the centre of Cheang’s science-fiction narratives is the interweaving of natural and digital processes, staged within interconnected ‘landscapes formations.’ Out-of-control robots, a car wreck inhabited by fungal growth, an AI-controlled avatar of the artist, as well as digital and natural composting of waste: each room of the exhibition becomes its own world, inviting the audience to explore and play.

An exhibition by Haus der Kunst München in collaboration with Ludwig Forum Aachen. Curated by Sarah Johanna Theurer (Haus der Kunst) and Holger Otten (Ludwig Forum). Curatorial Assistance: Wiebke Wiesner (Ludwig Forum).