Shu Lea Cheang: KI$$ KI$$

The first institutional survey exhibition of Shu Lea Cheang (b. 1954, Tainan, Taiwan) takes the taiwanese-american artist’s first feature film Fresh Kill (1994) as a starting point, presenting the artist and filmmaker’s world-building practices and updating works from the past three decades.

Cheang anticipated the advance of alternative currencies, investigated gamified societies, and probed biotechnologies. Her works often develop over several years through different stages and media, including video, installation, performance, and various forms of cinema.

The exhibition updates works and artefacts into new landscape formations extending through four gallery spaces. Trash appears as a primary theme that leads Cheang’s investigation into the entanglement of biosphere and technosphere. Each gallery is its own world in which internet-based installation and software interaction invite the audience to explore and play.

“KI$$ KI$$” reimagines the exhibition as a transformative journey or a “machine of experience”. From a different angle, but in dialogue with the ongoing exhibition of Philippe Parreno, Shu Lea Cheang’s daring science-fiction narratives focus on non-human intelligences, both natural and artificial. Engaging with new and ancient technologies, the exhibition continues our engagement with contemporary transmedia art practices.

Haus der Kunst presents the first survey exhibition by artist and filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang curated by Sarah Johanna Theurer with Laila Wu. It includes works and artefacts from the past three decades presented as landscapes, interconnected elements of the artist’s creative cosmos.

Convenience packaging, obsolete tools, and scrambled data—waste in its many forms—become entry points for examining the complex relationship between the biosphere and technosphere. “KI$$ KI$$” brings together autonomous robots, live sound transmission, and living mushrooms, reinforcing Haus der Kunst’s vision of exhibitions as dynamic, participatory spaces.

A monograph published by Mousse Publishing accompanies the exhibition, offering insight into Cheang’s practice through selected work scenarios, an in-depth conversation with the artist, a glossary decoding her unique language, and previously unseen archival material.

Haus der Kunst, Prinzregentenstraße 1, 80538 München, Germany