The Organology of the World

Musquiqui Chihying, solo  
LISTE Art Fair Basel | Basel
10 - 16, June, 2024

Tabula Rasa Gallery presents "The Organology of the World," a solo booth by artist Musquiqui Chihying, featuring the artist's latest works, The Link and The Cable. As abolitionist movements unfolded in the early 19th century, Western colonial empires encountered a severe shortage of labour in their tropical plantations worldwide. Coolies from Asia emerged as ideal substitutes, sustaining production tasks essential for trade. These coolies, supplementing the labour shortfall after the abolition of the slave trade, not only altered the distribution of agriculture, commodities, minerals, and natural resources in the Global South but also influenced the dispersion and aggregation of Asian ethnicities.



From the portraits of coolies captured by British colonists to the blueprint of the "World Digital Brain" crafted by Chinese multinational corporations through submarine cable connections, The Organology of the World endeavours to dismantle the gaze of control, technique, and colonialism. It regards the islands in the Afrasian Sea as "key points" in this technical network through intricate image appropriation and observation, thereby reflecting on the history of exchanges in contemporary global waters across intertwined timelines. This film was produced in collaboration with the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Germany, the Rongxing Hakka Opera Troupe in Taiwan, and the Aapravasi Ghat, the museum of coolie history in Mauritius.


About the Artist

Musquiqui Chihying (b.1985) is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Taipei and Berlin. He explores the cultural and social identities constructed through the flow and circulation of audiovisual elements in physical and virtual spacetime. Specialising in the use of multimedia such as film and sound, he investigates the human condition and environmental system in the age of global capitalisation and engages in the inquiry of and research on issues of subjectivity in contemporary social culture in the Global South.


Selected solo exhibitions include: LISTE Art Fair Basel, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Basel, 2024); Ghost in the Sea, Hong Foundation 7th Tung Chung Prize, Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (Taipei, 2024); Too Loud a Dust, Tabula Rasa Gallery (London, 2023); There are Lights that Never Go Out, Museum of Contemporary Art (Taipei, 2021);  The Power of My Smile, Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (Taipei, 2019); I’ll be Back, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing, 2018). His works have been shown in several international institutions and film festivals, such as 72nd Berlinale (2022), Art Sonje Center in Seoul (2021), Centre Pompidou in Paris (2020), International Film Festival Rotterdam (2020), 68th Berlinale (2018), 2016 Taipei Biennial, 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014) etc. He is the artist-in-residence at the Delfina Foundation (London, 2021), the finalist of the 2019 Berlin Art Prize and the winner of the Loop Barcelona Video Art Production Award 2019 from Han Nefkens Foundation in collaboration with the Fundació Joan Miró. He is a member of the Taiwanese art group Fuxinghen Studio, and the founder of the Research Lab of Image and Sound.