Shu Lea Cheang (; born April 13, 1954) is a Taiwanese-American artist and filmmaker who lived and worked in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s, until relocating to Europe in 2000. Since the 1980s, as a

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

and new-media artist, she has navigated topics of ethnic stereotyping, sexual politics, and

institutional oppression Oppression is malice (law), malicious or injustice, unjust treatment of, or exercise of power (social and political), power over, a group of individuals, often in the form of governmental authority. Oppression may be overt or covert, depending on ...

with her radical experimentations in digital realms. Over the past decade, she has emerged as a prominent figure in new media art. Cheang is one of the leading multimedia artists dealing with multidisciplinary topics. She is regarded as a pioneering figure in internet-based art, with her multimedia approach at the interface between film, video, internet-based installation, software interaction and durational performance. Her work is often interactive. She is most noted for her individual approach in the realm of art and technology, creatively intermingling social issues with artistic methods. Cheang's work employs film, video, net-based installation, and interface to explore "...ethnic stereotyping, the nature and excesses of popular media, institutional – and especially governmental – power, race relations, and sexual politics." Cheang has also written and directed the feature films '' I.K.U.'' and '' Fluidø'', and directed '' Fresh Kill''.

Life and career

Cheang was born during a time when Taiwan was under martial law in 1954. Cheang received a BA in history from the

National Taiwan University National Taiwan University (NTU; zh, t=國立臺灣大學, poj=Kok-li̍p Tâi-oân Tāi-ha̍k, p=, s=) is a National university, national Public university, public research university in Taipei, Taiwan. Founded in 1928 during Taiwan under J ...

in 1976 and an MA in Cinema Studies from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

in 1979. From Taiwan, Cheang moved to New York in the 1980s. She admitted to feeling liberated after moving, calling it a process of “self-acknowledgment and affirmation.” Her art career seeded and bloomed in New York. Shortly after she moved to New York, she joined the collective Paper Tiger Television and started producing live weekly programs that used public-access channels to reach cable subscribers. After 20 years in New York, she went on a decade of a self-imposed lifestyle as a digital nomad which she says “liberated me from monthly fixed payments of rent, electricity and phone bills.” She lived in Japan, Holland, the United Kingdom, and finally relocated to Paris in 2007, where she currently works and resides. Cheang concluded her 20 years spent in New York with
Brandon
' (1998–1999), the first Guggenheim Museum web art commission/collection. Tough social themes such as racial politics help progress her work. She recalls, “When I first got to New York, I was more concerned about certain kinds of racial discrimination or stereotypes of being an Asian woman — there were many different kinds of fantasies about Asian women.”

2019 Venice Biennale

Shu Lea Cheang represented Taiwan at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. She is the first woman to represent Taiwan with a solo-exhibition. Her site-specific work was installed at the Palazzo delle Prigioni, a former prison across from the Palazzo Ducale in

Piazza San Marco Piazza San Marco (; ), often known in English as St Mark's Square, is the principal Town Square, public square of Venice, Italy, where it is generally known just as ''la Piazza'' ("the Square"). The Piazzetta ("little Piazza/Square") is an ext ...

. Curated by philosopher Paul B. Preciado, the immersive installation explored pervasive technologies of control, from surveillance to incarceration, drawing from historical and contemporary cases in which people have been imprisoned due to their gender, sexual orientation, or race.

The Influencers 2019

In her talk for The Influencers 2019, "Genre Bending Gender Fxxxking", Cheang reflects on her eventful trajectory mixing, messing genres and genders in her multi-disciplinary art practices, from ''BRANDON'' (1998–1999, Guggenheim Museum), ''3x3x6'' (2019, Venice Biennale) to her current projects in process, ''UNBORN0x9'' and ''UKI'', an interruptive cinema.

Notable works

''Color Schemes'', is an interactive three-channel video installation exhibited at the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

in 1990. The video features people of different ethnicities and reveals the complex attitudes surrounding ethnic stereotyping embedded in American Culture. In 1994, Cheang directed the film '' Fresh Kill''. The title refers to a garbage dump in Staten Island. The film "envisions a post-apocalyptic landscape strewn with electronic detritus and suffering the toxic repercussions of mass marketing in a high-tech commodity culture." ''Bowling Alley'', commissioned by the

Walker Art Center The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...

and funded by

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

New Art/New Visions, was exhibited in 1995. The installation linked the Walker's Gallery 7, the city's community bowling alley (Bryant-Lake Bowl), and the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

. ''Bowling Alley'' mixed real-life with cyberspace to illustrate the similarities and differences of how people communicate with one another face-to-face and through the Internet. ''Bowling Alley'' was Cheang's first cybernetic installation. Cheang collaborated with other Minneapolis artists to present a work which set to challenge the idea of what is personal and public, popular art and fine art by intertwining these oppositions. Another major Web-based project Cheang created was ''Brandon'' (1998–1999). The one-year narrative project explored the issues of gender fusion and techno-body in both public space and cyberspace. The site got its name from

Brandon Teena Brandon Teena (December 12, 1972 – December 31, 1993) was an American transgender man who was raped and later, along with Phillip DeVine and Lisa Lambert, murdered in Humboldt, Nebraska, by John Lotter and Tom Nissen. His life and death are ...

, a trans man who was raped and murdered in 1993 after his biological sex was revealed. ''Brandon'' was the first Web-based artwork commissioned by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. It explores Brandon Teena's story in an experimental way that conveys the "fluidity and ambiguity of gender and identity in contemporary societies." In addition to the website, ''Brandon'' included live public events at the Guggenheim Museum, the De Waag Society for Old and New Media in Amsterdam, and Harvard University. Over time, as web browsers evolved, ''Brandon'' stopped displaying correctly. In 2017, the artwork was digitally restored and made publicly viewable again in a joint initiative by the Guggenheim's conservation department and New York University's department of computer science. ''Brandon'' was also featured in

Rhizome In botany and dendrology, a rhizome ( ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and Shoot (botany), shoots from its Node (botany), nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from ...

's Net Art Anthology, an online exhibition of one hundred important net artworks. The project was a major achievement in the conservation of net.born art. Contemporary web browsers could no longer recognize much of the early HTML code used on the site, or support the unique Java applets used to animate its text and images. In December 2016, Conserving Computer-Based Art (CCBA), a joint initiative of the Guggenheim and NYU, obtained approval from Cheang to restore the work. In 2000, Cheang directed the feature film '' I.K.U.'', a pornographic film which she claimed was inspired by ''

Blade Runner ''Blade Runner'' is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Di ...

.'' ''I.K.U.'' was nominated for an International Fantasy Film Award.

Recent works

Cheang's ''Locker Baby Project'' (2001-2012) is a playfield of sonic imagery triggered only by human interaction. Her baby series project proposes a fictional scenario set in year 2030. The transnational DPT (DollyPolly Transgency) advances clone babies as an intelligent industry. The Clone Generation holds the key to unlock the networked inter-sphere of ME-motion (Memory+Emotion). * ''Baby Play'' (2001), the first installment employs a large scale table football field. Opposing rows of 22 ball players are replaced by human sized cloned locker babies. The tracking of ball movement retrieves ME-data (texts and sound) deposited in respective lockers. * ''Baby Love'' (2005), the second installment consists of 6 large size teacups and 6 clone babies. Each teacup is an auto-driving mobile unit with spinning wheels allowing direction maneuver and speed variation. Each baby is a situated mac-mini engine with wifi linked to the net depository of shuffles and remixes of popular love songs. * ''Baby Work'' (2012), the third installment designates the public visiting the gallery to collect and rearrange scattered keys and compose words into collective sonic expression. Active participants are the clone babies who are entrusted to store and retrieve ME-data. Cheang wrote and directed the 2017 science fiction film '' Fluidø''. In 2019, Cheang was commissioned by Performa for the Performa 19 biennial. She created her work ''SLEEP1237'' (2019) which was presented as a special program for the Taiwanese Pavilion. In 2021, she was one of the participants in

John Greyson John Greyson (born March 13, 1960) is a Canadian director, writer, video artist, producer, and Activism, political activist, whose work frequently deals with queer characters and themes. He was part of a loosely affiliated group of filmmakers to ...

's experimental short documentary film ''

International Dawn Chorus Day The dawn chorus is the outbreak of birdsong at the start of a new day. In temperate countries this is most noticeable in spring when the birds are either defending a Territory (animal), breeding territory, trying to attract a mate or calling in t ...

''. Cheang directed the film ''UKI'' in 2023, a piece presenting a digital collage of game software-generated animation combined with live-action film and visual effects. UKI is presented as a sequel to I.K.U., Cheang's 2000 cyberpunk feature.

Filmography

Films

* 1990 – ''How History Was Wounded: An Exclusive Report on Taiwanese Media'' (Short film; director) * 1994 – '' Fresh Kill'' (director) * 2000 – '' I.K.U.'' (director, screenwriter) * 2000 – ''Love Me 2030'' (Short video; director) * 2017 – '' Fluidø'' (director, producer, screenwriter) * 2017 – ''Wonders Wander'' (director, producer, screenwriter) * 2023 - ''UKI'' (director)

Awards and recognition

Cheang was the recipient of the 2024 LG Guggenheim Award, an international art prize established as part of a long-term global partnership between

LG Group LG Corporation (or LG Group), formerly known as Lucky-Goldstar, is a South Korean multinational conglomerate founded by Koo In-hwoi in 1947 and managed by successive generations of his family. It is the fourth-largest company in South Korea. ...

and the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Street (Manhattan), 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts a permanent coll ...

to recognize groundbreaking artists in technology-based art.Alt URL
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References

External links

Bowling Alley

Brandon

Baby Love

Shu Lea Cheang
in the Video Data Bank * * Shu Lea Cheang's artworks an
biographical information
can be found in Experimental Television Center and it
repository
in the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art,

Cornell University Library The Cornell University Library is the library system of Cornell University. As of 2014, it holds over eight million printed volumes and over a million ebooks. More than 90 percent of its current 120,000 Periodical literature, periodical ti ...

.
Shu Lea Cheang
on

Vimeo Vimeo ( ) is an American Online video platform, video hosting, sharing, and services provider founded in 2004 and headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices and operates on a ...

* https://web.archive.org/web/20080203204921/http://tiger.towson.edu/~kbinya1/shu_lea_cheang.html * https://web.archive.org/web/20081118051407/http://www.walkerart.org/archive/1/B7737137B85D01716161.htm * http://the-artists.org/artist/Shu-Lea-Cheang * Tribe, Mark and Reena Jana. New Media Art

Shu Lea Cheang Papers
Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University Special Collections *http://www.babywork.biz/proposal/lockerbaby-3parts.pdf {{DEFAULTSORT:Cheang, Shu Lea 1954 births Living people Feminist artists Installation artists New media artists Women pornographic film directors Taiwanese women artists Artists from New York City Artists from Paris Taiwanese emigrants to the United States