Works by Musquiqui Chihying are part of Future Museology, a group exhibition at the Busan Museum of Art. Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB) is taking part in the exhibition with Afrasian Neural Network, and Musquiqui Chihying is invited to present The Cable (2024), The Link (2024-2026), The Smart City (2024), and The Flag (2026), a new work co-commissioned by the Busan Museum of Art and C-LAB. The project is co-curated by Wu Dar-Kuen and Huang Yi-Hsua.
Future Museology
Exhibition period: 17 September 2026 – 14 March 2027
Venue: Busan Museum of Art
Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab (C-LAB) is invited to participate in Future Museology at the Busan Museum of Art, which opens alongside the museum's official reopening after a two-year renovation. The group exhibition examines how museums might respond to shifts in technology, knowledge, and the environment, and invites audiences to consider multiple futures for museums today.
C-LAB's participation, Afrasian Neural Network, traces a lineage from the nineteenth-century Asian coolie trade and maritime labour networks, extending to contemporary technological infrastructures such as smart cities, submarine cables and semiconductors. It maps how historical networks of labour and mobility intertwine with present-day technological networks, situating Taiwan within the global circuits of information and technological infrastructure, and further reflecting on the complex relations among technological development, information flows and geopolitics. The artist, Musquiqui Chihying has long been concerned with the interconnections between human living conditions and environmental systems in the era of global capitalism; for this exhibition he has also developed a new work that take the submarine cables supporting global information flows as a point of entry, exploring the historical linkages between Asia and Africa as well as contemporary information infrastructures. Through the interweaving of history and the contemporary, the exhibition further transforms the museum into a perceptual network that connects different regions, times and political layers.
The Cable, The Link and The Smart City first debuted at Ghost in the Sea, Chihying's 2024 solo exhibition commissioned by the Hong Foundation. The works explored the special historical circumstances of ethnic and technological exchange between the African, Asian, and Afrasian Sea.
The Cable presents graphite cross-sections that magnify subsea cables into objects of scrutiny. Moving between scientific diagram and forensic image, the drawings reveal the cables' layered structure and examine how control over landing points, routes, maintenance, and ownership shapes information access and concentrates corporate and geopolitical power.
The Link challenges a controlling, colonial gaze by foregrounding islands in the Afrasian Sea as key sites within this network. Through reworked images and close observation, it traces exchanges across today's global waters through intersecting timelines.
The Smart City surveys smart-city projects in South Africa, Kenya, Mauritius, Indonesia, and Malaysia through commemorative coins derived from archival images, tracing how technological imaginaries, corporate power, and security-led governance circulate across the Afro-Asian region.
Images:
- Musquiqui Chihying, The Smart City (2024), installation view from Future Museology, Busan Museum of Art, Busan, South Korea. Courtesy of C-LAB. Photo: Huang Yi-Hsua.
- Musquiqui Chihying, The Flag (2026), co-commissioned by the Busan Museum of Art and C-LAB. Courtesy of C-LAB. Photo: Chen Kuan-Yu.
Learn more --
https://art.busan.go.kr/tblTsite07Display/viewFutureClientEng.nm?id=20260911100642819
https://clab.org.tw/en/events/future-museology-afrasian-neural-network
https://musquiqui.com/Ghost-In-The-Sea
