LOVER LOVE

Shu Lea Cheang’s "LOVER LOVE" is a profoundly interactive and multi-sensory exhibition that interrogates the societal treatment of transgender bodies through a visceral and participatory lens. Currently on display at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York City, the installation, which opened in 2026, challenges viewers to confront their role in the marginalization and resilience of transgender individuals. The exhibition’s genesis is as compelling as the work itself, rooted in Cheang’s 2024 nationwide tour of a newly restored print of her seminal 1994 debut feature film, Fresh Kill. This retrospective journey unexpectedly led Cheang to a vibrant queer and trans community in Tucson, Arizona, whose profound connection to each other and their environment deeply impacted her artistic vision. The exhibition culminates this engagement, featuring eight members of this community who form the emotional and visual core of LOVER LOVE. Thirty years after her groundbreaking lesbian cyberfeminist thriller, Cheang has returned to themes of societal toxicity and resistance, transforming them into a potent, desert-inflected dialogue within the museum space. This exhibition, a complex tapestry of film, performance, and interactive technology, stands as one of the most urgent and thought-provoking artistic statements to emerge in New York galleries this year.

The Genesis of "LOVER LOVE": From Fresh Kill to Desert Resilience

Shu Lea Cheang, a pioneering artist whose career has consistently explored the liminal spaces between the visible and the coded, the institutional and the defiant, has long been a singular voice in contemporary art. Her early contributions to net art in the 1990s fundamentally reshaped the internet into a potent platform for political subversion. Her practice has consistently woven together technology, queer politics, and social memory with an avant-garde spirit, demonstrating an early understanding of intersectionality long before the term gained widespread currency. Cheang’s trajectory is marked by an unwavering commitment to remaining on the margins while engaging with the world’s most critical conversations, a testament to her bravery and refusal to be easily categorized or silenced.

The impetus for LOVER LOVE emerged from Cheang’s 2024 tour of Fresh Kill, a film that, upon its release, offered a prescient look at environmental decay and lesbian identity in a cyber-feminist framework. The tour, which included a significant stop in Tucson, Arizona, exposed Cheang to a thriving queer and trans community. This encounter was transformative, sparking a deep resonance that compelled her to return and collaborate. The eight individuals from this community became the central figures in LOVER LOVE, infusing the work with their lived experiences and perspectives. This direct engagement with a community in a geographically and culturally distinct environment—the stark beauty and resilience of the desert—served as a catalyst for Cheang to reimagine her artistic language, pushing her work into new, vital territories. The result is an immersive, four-channel video installation that commands the space of the Leslie-Lohman Museum, utilizing movable screens to create a dynamic and responsive viewing experience.

An Interactive Call to Action: The Mechanics of Empathy and Responsibility

"LOVER LOVE" immediately engages the viewer through its interactive design, demanding physical participation. The exhibition features four large film screens mounted on movable tracks, allowing visitors to push and pull them. This act of manipulation is central to the work’s conceptual framework. As viewers rearrange the screens, they are, in essence, physically moving and repositioning representations of trans bodies. This tactile engagement triggers fragments of A�rea Negrot’s voice, sampled from her 2011 song of the same title, which gives the installation its name. These vocal excerpts are amplified through subwoofers, creating a resonant frequency that is felt physically, a vibration that Cheang has described as akin to experiencing societal brutality.

Cheang articulates this mechanism with striking clarity: the act of moving the screens embodies society’s tendency to displace and marginalize transgender individuals. However, the installation offers a nuanced counterpoint to this narrative of defeat. When the screens are moved out of alignment, the projected images do not disappear; instead, they spill onto the surrounding walls, floor, and into unexpected corners, transforming the exhibition space into a canvas for proliferation. The trans bodies that viewers attempt to displace are suddenly everywhere, demonstrating a powerful visual metaphor for the inherent resilience and omnipresence of these communities. The room becomes imbued not only with Negrot’s voice but also with the collective force of bodies that refuse to be erased.

This interactive element is designed to provoke a profound sense of responsibility in the viewer. Positioned within a museum, tasked with physically manipulating images of trans bodies, at a time when the health, safety, and autonomy of these very bodies are facing significant legislative challenges, the consequence of each movement is immediate, sonic, and undeniably personal. This distinguishes "LOVER LOVE" from art that merely offers an illusion of agency; Cheang’s work demands genuine participation, transforming witnesses into active agents within the artwork’s unfolding narrative. The act of rearrangement becomes an act of complicity, but also, crucially, an act of potential liberation through visibility.

A Tribute to A�rea Negrot: Grief as Structural Foundation

A�rea Negrot, a musician, filmmaker, immigrant, and a significant collaborator with Cheang across multiple projects, is a spectral yet palpable presence throughout "LOVER LOVE." Tragically, Negrot passed away in October 2023. Cheang’s interpretation of Negrot’s death is not one of despair but of a profound, perhaps misunderstood, belief in transcendence. Cheang has shared that she does not believe Negrot chose to die but rather genuinely believed she could fly. This belief is powerfully evoked in the exhibition’s opening image: a six-winged seraph soaring above the Arizona sky, with Negrot elevated into a symbolic figure, yet never reduced to mere symbolism.

This act of image-making is characterized by its raw devotion, a quality that art criticism often approaches with caution, deeming it too direct or lacking in ironic distance. Yet, it is precisely this refusal of distance that imbues the image with its potent emotional force. The grief woven into "LOVER LOVE" is not an incidental element; it is structural, serving as the very framework that holds the entire work together. The exhibition becomes a space for memorialization, a testament to Negrot’s legacy, and an exploration of her enduring spirit.

The Performers of Tucson: Embodied Resilience and Radical Self-Expression

The performers Cheang engaged from Tucson bring their own extraordinary artistic languages to the screen, contributing to the multifaceted nature of "LOVER LOVE." Without a prescribed script, each performer was granted the autonomy to present a solo piece, resulting in a diverse and compelling array of expressions. These performances range from ritualized BDSM practices and the symbolic drawing of blood with cactus spines to a cello performance that ignites the desert landscape and dark, complex drag personas that defy fixed interpretations of self.

Before the performers began their solos, Cheang shared with them the story of A�rea Negrot: her music, her achievements, her experiences as an immigrant, her struggles with loneliness, and her untimely death. Cheang recounts that the performers received this information with a profound desire to honor Negrot, to keep her present in a vital, ongoing sense. This sentiment is explicitly articulated in the film through a banner that reads, "A�rea is present." This statement transcends mere metaphor or wishful thinking; it is presented as a material condition of the work, a testament to Negrot’s enduring impact.

Among these remarkable performers is Azrael Fayme, a 17-year-old poet and trans activist. Fayme’s inclusion in the film is particularly poignant, given their personal experience of being denied medical treatment for a common cold due to their transgender identity being registered by doctors before their symptoms. In their segment, Fayme speaks about the power of dreaming as the initial step towards manifesting a new reality. Cheang frames this within a lineage of radical thinkers and activists, connecting Fayme’s words to the ideas of Malcolm X and Arundhati Roy, and to the concept of a portal opening on the other side of catastrophe. In the current political climate of 2026, where gender-affirming care is increasingly criminalized and transitioning itself is a legislative target, the word "dreaming" is not a gentle concept. It lands with the force of an act of defiance, a quiet but potent rebellion. Hope, often seen as a fragile emotion, is here depicted as a more dangerous force, a shield covered in the sharp glochids of a cactus—resilient, protective, and potentially painful.

A Day for the Living: Inverting Catastrophe into Presence

Shu Lea Cheang’s intention with "LOVER LOVE" is to invert the logic of traditions like D�a de Muertos, proposing not a day for the dead, but a day for the living. In the face of systematic political efforts to render transgender people invisible, the exhibition offers the antithesis of disappearance. It celebrates the full, vibrant lives of eight individuals from a desert city, living on their own terms. Projected within the austere environment of a museum, their grief, joy, rituals, and fury converge, filling all screens simultaneously. This is not an elegy but an affirmation, a powerful assertion of presence and survival in a world that often seeks to deny it.

The exhibition serves as a critical counter-narrative to the ongoing political and social climate. In 2024, when the Fresh Kill tour began, and continuing through the exhibition’s opening in 2026, legislative efforts targeting transgender rights have intensified. Data from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law indicates a significant rise in anti-transgender legislation introduced at the state level, impacting access to healthcare, participation in sports, and public accommodations. For instance, by early 2023, over 15 states had enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming care for minors, a trend that has continued to expand. This legal assault creates an environment of fear and precarity, making acts of self-affirmation and community building even more crucial.

Cheang’s work, therefore, arrives at a moment of urgent need. It provides a vital space for witnessing and engagement, moving beyond passive observation to active participation. The implications of "LOVER LOVE" extend beyond the art world, serving as a powerful cultural intervention. It amplifies the voices and experiences of a marginalized community, challenging societal norms and advocating for greater understanding and acceptance. The exhibition’s success lies in its ability to transform abstract political anxieties into tangible, emotional, and deeply personal encounters, fostering empathy and a sense of shared responsibility among its audience.

LOVER LOVE is on view at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York until January 3, 2027. The exhibition’s extended run provides ample opportunity for the public to engage with its complex themes and participate in its transformative dialogue.