In his works, Musquiqui Chihying has tenaciously drawn linkages between the East and West of the Afro-Asian Ocean, weaving a complex narrative that revolves around digital technology, biopolitics, colonial histories, and neo-imperialist presence, all regulated by modern codes of economic development, expansion, and competition. One such link that runs across the historical, economic, and geopolitical web of global connectivity is a submarine cable facilitating cross-regional trade and information exchanges. In The Cable (2024–25), the artist presents a scrap of a telegraph cable from Japanese-occupied Taiwan (1895–1945) in a 3D scan print. The cable, found in 1999 on the ocean bed, is now part of the collection at the National Science and Technology Museum in Kaohsiung. The print is accompanied by a series of sectional drawings depicting the interior structures of submarine cables, which are evocative of the geometrical composition found in the African masks of different cultures. The similitude between these masks and cable sections illustrates a continuation of mass-scale colonial plunder and gaze often touted under the guise of collaboration as well as technological and economic advancement. In The Link (2024), Chihying delves into the technology of surveillance and discipline and explores the more invisible ties between past and present hegemony. In this video installation, the early nineteenth-century control tactic of portrait-making, implemented by the British Empire to surveil Chinese indentured labourers in East African islands, echoes the facial recognition technology fundamental to the ‘smart city’ projects Chinese tech companies intend to build under the Belt and Road Initiative (2013–).

Commissioned by the Hong Foundation, co-produced by Musquiqui Chihying and Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), 2024–25

Works in the exhibition: The Link (2024–), 3-channel video installation, 30 00"; The Cable (2024–25), installation with 6 graphite drawings, each 42 × 42 cm, 3D printed object, c.50 × 10 × 10 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Hong Foundation