Born in Taiwan and now based in Paris, Shu Lea Cheang began her career in the 1980s as a member of activist media collectives Paper Tiger TV and Deep Dish TV. In the 1990s, she moved into large scale installations and Net Art, producing a number of groundbreaking works including including Brandon (1998–99), the first-ever web-based artwork to be commissioned and collected by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. At the same time, she also began work on a cycle of four feature films, including Fresh Kill (1994), I.K.U. (2000), Fluidø (2017), and UKI (2023), which encompass a new genre she calls “Scifi New Queer Cinema.”
Cheang’s works are included in the world’s key permanent collections for contemporary art, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; NTT InterCommunication Center, Tokyo; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and DSL collection, Paris, among others.
She is also the recipient of numerous honors, and awards, including the 2024 LG Guggenheim award. Of her body of work, the jury noted, “Cheang continuously offers new understandings of technological changes and their effects on our societies and her expansive output is, and will remain, highly influential for generations.” We are honored to support her groundbreaking practice.”
Shu Lea Cheang: UKI
Wednesday, April 10, 6:00 p.m.
Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.
Shu Lea Cheang: UKI
In her latest feature, pioneering media artist Shu Lea Cheang mixes 3D animation and live action to create an exhilaratingly queer science-fiction epic of corporate surveillance, contagion, sex, and biotechnology. Drawing from her experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and '90s, Cheang imbues UKI with the power, in her words, “to mobilize, to infiltrate, to subvert.”
This film is followed by a conversation between Cheang and artist Lee Blalock, assistant professor of Art & Technology at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Shu Lea Cheang: Fresh Kill
Thursday, April 11, 6:00 p.m.
Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St.
Renowned media artist Shu Lea Cheang presents her groundbreaking debut feature, a cyberfeminist eco-thriller, newly restored for its 30th anniversary. Partners Shareen (Sarita Choudhury) and Claire (Erin McMurtry) find themselves in the crosshairs of a nefarious multinational corporation after they discover it is poisoning citizens through toxic cat food, contaminated sushi, and nuclear waste. Shifting between horror, camp, and agit-prop, Fresh Kill’s tale of predatory capitalism and environmental catastrophe remains just as pressing today.
This film is followed by a conversation between Cheang and Emily Martin, distribution manager at Video Data Bank.
Presented in partnership with Video Data Bank.
Free for SAIC students, $5 for SAIC/AIC faculty and staff, $6.50 for @filmcenter members and $13 for the general public.
CATE events are presented with real-time captions (CART). Hearing loops, wheelchair accessibility, and companion seating are also available at the @filmcenter. For other accessibility requests, please visit saic.edu/access or write cate@saic.edu.