Musquiqui Chihying's 'A Life of Navigation' Surveys a Decade at Hayward Gallery

Musquiqui Chihying's mini-retrospective 'A Life of Navigation' is on view at Hayward Gallery in London from August 25 to October 18, 2026. The exhibition spans a decade of the Taiwanese artist's work, tracing a shift from playful social critique to anxious inquiry. His 2014 film 'The Jog' shows him running on a German supermarket checkout conveyor belt, while 'The Toyota' (2015) features six photographs of his father using an inflatable car to reserve a parking space in Taipei. These early pieces address spiritual alienation and the squeeze on public space. The 2025– film 'The Annotation' turns to autonomous driving, with reclining seats that rumble like engines, and interviews with AI scholars, journalists, and data workers about who benefits from the technology and whose labor is exploited. In 'The Gamer' (2026), young Nigerians play games like Call of Duty for paying clients in China and Japan, echoing the exploitation of data annotators in Africa. The show highlights a millennial pivot from irony to anxiety, with Chihying's interview technique revealing complex Afro-Asian entanglements produced by AI. The exhibition is concise and intentionally curated, pulling from ten years of work that marries curiosity with humor. Installation views are by Rob Harris, courtesy of Hayward Gallery. The review is by Christopher Whitfield, a writer and educator based in Taipei.