Shu Lea Cheang (Chinese: 鄭淑麗) (she, her) is a Taiwanese-American artist and filmmaker. Since the 1980s, as a multimedia and new-media artist, she has navigated topics of ethnic stereotyping, sexual politics, and institutional oppression with her radical experimentations in digital realms. She drafts sci-fi narratives in her film scenario and artwork imagination, crafting her own “science” fiction genre of new queer cinema. Cheang 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 project “Brandon” (1998–1999) was the first piece of web art commissioned and collected by the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Her 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 written and directed the feature films I.K.U., Fluidø, and the upcoming UKI. Cheang received a BA in history from the National Taiwan University in 1976 and an MA in Cinema Studies from New York University in 1979.
