'KI$$ KI$$' Spotlights Three Decades of Shu Lea Cheang's New Media Art
On view at Haus der Kunst in Munich.
Shu Lea Cheang’s daring futuristic vision is taking over Munich’s Haus der Kunst in KI$$ KI$$, her first institutional survey. Described as a “machine of experience,” the exhibition takes audiences on a sensorial journey through the avant-anarch oeuvre that cemented her status as a pioneering voice in new media art.
Beginning with her 1994 feature film Fresh Kill , the show delves into three decades of works spanning video, installation, performance and cinema. Circling software installations, internet interactions and multiplayer performances, Cheang transforms each gallery into a world of its own, inviting a playful reconsideration of the physical and the digital.
“She thinks of her art as a sketch or a rehearsal leading towards film,” the museum wrote. The show “focuses on the mise-en-scène: rather than presenting individual objects, the works are synchronised and combined to form landscapes which visitors may wander through and explore and engage with at leisure.”
Peppered throughout the KI$$ KI$$ are remnants of trash, a symbol used to connect biological and increasingly technified realities: Home Delivery fills the air with scents of homemade food as a robotic arm piles takeout boxes, whereas Portal to the Next gives a car crash scene an artistic second life, warning the dangers of our society’s insatiable need for speed.
Born in Taiwan, the artist moved to New York in the 1980s, where her career took root in the burgeoning new media and independent cinema scene. With experiments grappling with biotechnology, live TV and alternative currencies, Cheang continues to push the envelope of digital culture, challenging the social expectations every step of the way.
KI$$ KI$$ is now on view through August 3, 2025.
Haus der Kunst
Prinzregentenstraße 1,
80538 München, Germany
View this post on Instagram
