Opening: Thursday, November 27, 2025, 7pm
KI$$ KI$$ represents the first institutional survey exhibition of Shu Lea Cheang (b. 1954, Tainan, Taiwan). Taking her first feature film Fresh Kill (1994) as a starting point, the Taiwanese-American artist and filmmaker brings together works from the past three decades and places them in an updated context.
Cheang moved to New York City in the 1980s, where she joined the vibrant scene of independent cinema and started experimenting with video, radio, TV and network technologies. Since the 1990s, her work has challenged and expanded our understanding of digital culture. Cheang anticipated the advance of crypto currencies, investigated gamified societies and probed biotechnologies. Conceived as “experience machines”, her works are often developed over several years through and across different stages and media, including video, installation, performance and experimental cinema.
KI$$ KI$$ presents a selection of works and artefacts that are crafted into new interconnected landscape formations extending through all four exhibition spaces and the museum hall bringing the artist’s creative cosmos to life and allowing us to explore her unique practices of world-building.
Within these science fiction stories, trash, recycling as well as natural and artificial intelligence drive Cheang’s investigation into the entanglement of the biosphere and the technosphere. Each gallery is its own world in which internet-based installation and software interaction invite 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)
Supported by Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation and the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Credits: Shu Lea Cheang, Fresh Kill, 1994. Design: Wassily Erlenbusch.
