Meiya Cheng is a freelance curator who lives and works in Taipei. Her selected curated exhibitions include: Augmenting the World (The 6th Taipei Digital Art Festival, international section, 2011); Trading Futures (co-curated with Pauline Yao, TCAC, 2012); The 6th Queens International (co-curated with Hitomi Iwasaki, Queens Museum, NYC, 2013); The Great Ephemeral (co-curated with New Museum team, New Museum, NYC, 2015); and Public Spirits (Ujazdówski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, 2016). Cheng focuses on the exchange mechanism of labor and value, and the structural issues in art production. In her curation practice, she addresses the possibilities of creating an open structure in institutions, and of such models serving as a mechanism to create changes in the system. Cheng participated in the founding Taipei Contemporary Art Center in 2009, and has been involved in its operation for ten years, acting as chair from 2012-2014. With teamwork as the working model, she tries to build an alternative mode of practice that constantly examines and self/examines institutional conditions in art production.
Meiya Cheng invites Tsai Charwei, Fujui Wang, Lin Yi Chun, and Hsu Che Yu to produce new site-specific projects in the Ulaanbaatar International Media Art Festival. The four artists' new works will be produced and presented in different venues and events within the festival; later, video works will be presented in the screening event in Taipei, alongside those of Mongolian filmmakers.
For the project exhibition in Gwangju, Meiya Cheng has delved into the female perspective on the migration issue. Statistically, the majority of the female migrant population constitutes married dependents, domestic servants, and sex workers. The regulation and immigration policies of nation-states reinforce the gender division of labour in addition to market demands. The services that migrant women and women in floating populations provide is usually related to reproduction, domestic caring, and sexual fantasy. All these services require ‘femininity’: caring, love, patience. A migrant status demands psychological labour of women over and above their physical labour. Cheng investigates this perspective with works of Chen Jen Pei, Jen Liu, and Eisa Jocson.