NADA | Ling-lin Ku
Ling-lin Ku presented at NADA New York 2024
May 2 – 5, 2024 (see fair hours below)
548 West 22nd Street, NYC

For the 10th edition of NADA New York, CUE Art presents a new sculpture work by Ling-lin Ku following her solo show at CUE, Insight Outsight. Ku was an awardee of CUE’s 2023 open call for solo exhibitions, through which she received mentorship from Agnieszka Kurant. 

The work on view at NADA, Invisiphilia (2024), builds upon the artist’s ongoing interest in the relationships between natural, built, and digital environments, examining these systems through the lens of insect behavior. In Ku’s practice, she generates worlds that leap between macro and micro scales, questioning familiar dichotomies between animal and human, ecology and technology, and the metaphorical and physical.

Invisiphilia is a digitally fabricated sculpture that playfully interrogates the disorienting experience of navigating digital spaces. A swarm of pill-shaped bugs engraved with 404 (the error code for a webpage that cannot be found) sits atop and within a bright pink melting puddle, navigating toward a central vortex. The layers of the structure become a stand-in for imaginary webpages and simultaneously resemble flora found in nature. 

Presented on the rooftop of 548 West as part of NADA’s Sculpture Projects, Ku’s work leverages this space of gathering to ask us to consider new environments and pose key questions: Where do we find ourselves in our search between desires and answers? In what ways do we render ourselves visible and invisible in these new digital landscapes?

Read about the artist and her work below, and learn more about NADA New York here.

About the Artist
Ling-lin Ku is a visual artist currently based in Pittsburgh, PA. Her studio is a playground and an alchemy of the world. Ku plays with the space between digital data and tangible materials through digital fabrication. Her work draws from local references, including food, body parts, and products, but she recontextualizes them through proximity, scale, texture, display structures, and material, upending our relationship to the known. The work slips in and out of categorization, creating a new way in which we come to understand objecthood. 

Ku’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, in cities that include Barcelona, Paris, Salzburg, New York, Richmond, Austin, Houston, and Los Angeles. She has been in residence at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn; the Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg; Haystack Open Studio Residency in Maine; L'AiR Atelier 11 in Paris; and 18th Street Art Center in Los Angeles. She is also a recipient of the Seebacher Prize in Fine Arts awarded by American Austrian Foundation as well as the Umlauf Extended Prize for alumni of UT Austin. In 2019, she was named a Houston Artadia Fellow. In 2021, she received an honorable mention for the International Sculpture Center’s Innovator Award. Ku received an MFA from University of Texas at Austin and a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. In 2022, she joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University where she is an assistant professor at the school of art.

About the Exhibition
To learn more about Ling-lin Ku’s 2023 solo exhibition at CUE, Insight Outsight, mentored by Agnieszka Kurant, see here.

For more context about the work and the artist’s practice, read Constanza Salazar’s long-form essay about the exhibition, “A ‘Bug’ in the System,” mentored by Carson Chan.

Fair Information + Tickets
NADA New York 2024
Thursday, May 2nd – Sunday, May 5th
548 West 22nd Street, NYC

Fair Hours:
VIP Breakfast (by invitation): Friday, May 3, 10 am–11 am
VIP Preview (by invitation): Thursday, May 2, 10 am–4 pm
Open to the Public: Thursday, May 2nd, 4–7 pm; Friday, May 3rd & Saturday, May 4th: 11 am–7 pm; Sunday, May 5th, 11 am–5 pm

View ticket information here.

Inquiries
To inquire about available works and commissions by Ling-lin Ku, please contact info@cueartfoundation.org.

Artwork Preview Photos

About CUE Art
CUE Art is a nonprofit organization that works with and for emerging and underrecognized artists and art workers to create new opportunities and present varied perspectives in the arts. Through our gallery space and public programs, we foster the development of thought-provoking exhibitions and events, create avenues for mentorship, cultivate relationships amongst peers and the public, and facilitate the exchange of ideas.