The exhibition “Witch Hunt” will take place at the Hammer Museum from October 10, 2021, to January 9, 2022. Organized by Connie Butler, Hammer Museum Chief Curator, and Anne Ellegood, Institute of Contemporary Art Museum, Los Angeles Executive Director, this exhibition will present the works of 16 women artists from 13 countries, who use feminist, queer, and decolonial strategies to investigate current and historical political events, social conditions, and overlooked or suppressed artistic legacies. With the support from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the Taiwan Academy of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles, Taiwanese-American artist Shu Lea Cheang will display her installation “UKI Virus Rising.” The Hammer Museum will also provide one virtual artist talk with Shu Lea Cheang during the exhibition. For more information, please visit: https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2021/witch-hunt
Shu Lea Cheang is a prominent Taiwanese-American artist and filmmaker who employs various art mediums and film formats in her works. Her project “Brandon” (1998-1999) was the first piece of web art commissioned and collected by the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In 2019, her project titled "3x3x6" represented the Taiwan Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition “Witch Hunt” will feature Cheang’s three-channel video installation “UKI Virus Rising” which was firstly presented in Gwangju Biennale 2018. It was also displayed in her solo online exhibition titled “Virus Becoming” at the Departmental Museum of Asian Arts in Nice. The virus is the exploratory subject of Cheang’s works since the 2000s. As part of this series of works that respond to all kinds of chaos caused by the pandemic, “UKI Virus Rising” proposes dialectical thinking to the virus. As a source of contagion, the virus is not only associated with invasion and attack but also inscribed with the potentiality to propagate, mobilize, and resist.
Located in Westwood of Los Angeles County, the Hammer Museum is an art museum and cultural center which is one of three public art institutions of the School of the Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). It is well-known for its rich collection and progressive array of innovative exhibitions in visual art. For decades, it has been devoted to promoting social justice and artistic freedom.
Press Contact:
Sophie Chen
Taiwan Academy of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles
Email: a10353@moc.gov.tw
Tel: (213) 403-0168#104
