Shu Lea Cheang: KI$$ KI$$

“My biggest ambition in America is to raise a cat that eats rice. Also, to convert cats in America to eat rice. I got the chance in summertime. It’s like a conspiracy when in summer all my friends left town, that I was entrusted with the job of feeding & playing with their cat. I decided to start my plan: a try-out for rice-eating cat. How to make the cat turn away from 9 Lives & kiss the left-over rice with a few fish bones, few leaves of vegetables?” —A page from Shu Lea Cheang’s notebook, 1984

Haus der Kunst presents the first survey exhibition by artist and filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang (b.1954 in Taiwan). It includes works and artefacts from the past three decades. These are not presented as autonomous objects but as landscapes—interconnected elements of the artist’s creative cosmos.

Convenience packaging, outdated tools and scrambled data—waste in its various forms—are the vectors that lead an investigation into the entanglement of the biosphere and the technosphere. KI$ KI$ features autonomous robots, live sound transmission and living mushrooms, and thus aligns with Haus der Kunst’s commitment to creating exhibitions as evolving, interactive spaces.

A monograph by Mousse Publishing accompanies the exhibition. It includes selected work scenarios, an in-depth conversation with the artist, an extensive glossary decoding the artist’s unique language, and unpublished materials from her archives. The book can be ordered here.

KI$ KI$ is curated by Sarah Johanna Theurer with Laila Wu.

For their annual support of our programme, we thank our shareholders, the Free State of Bavaria and the Gesellschaft der Freunde der Stiftung Haus der Kunst München e.V. We further thank our major supporter, the Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, for their generous commitment to our work, as well as the Ulli und Uwe Kai-Stiftung.