Cathy Hsiao

Cathy Hsiao is a Chicago-based artist and educator growing up between the US, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. As a member of the Kuomintang army, her grandfather participated in the inaugural legislature of the Republic of China, and this history informs much of her work. Hsiao’s practice is one of personal, cultural, and material translations of the complex intersections of ecological, political, and digital space, particularly across the global south, in multidisciplinary installations of sculpture, sound, and imagery. Previous work offered growing indigo as a response to 2019–20 Hong Kong prodemocracy protests and re-creating, in large-scale casts, memories of her childhood in Asia.

Hsiao holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was a New Artist Society Merit Fellow from 2014–2017, and a BA in history and art history from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a 2019 Newcity Magazine Breakout Artist, a 2020 Graham Foundation Artist Grantee, a 2022 Hopper Prize winner and a 2022 Fountainhead Artist-in-Residence in Climate and Environmental Sustainability. Recently, her work has been shown in exhibitions at the Chinese American Museum of Chicago and the Fountainhead Biennial II at Emerson Dorsch Gallery, among others.