About the Exhibition

Irene Hsiao Artist in Residence
Blue Alice
March 2022-February 2023

21c Chicago’s Artist in Residence program offers prolonged engagement, development, and support for Chicago artists. Through this program, we invite innovative Chicago artists to create new works inspired by our exhibition. Our first Artist in Residence is Irene Hsiao, will create new works created through dance and performance in direct response to 21c’s current exhibition, Pop Stars! Irene Hsiao and these projects are supported by 21c Museum Hotel Chicago.

In this residency, multidisciplinary artist Irene Hsiao creates experimental performances and public art projects inspired by the artists, artworks, exhibitions, spaces, and circumstances of 21c Museum Hotel Chicago. Her engagement with Pop Stars! interprets, constructs, and deconstructs the idea of the pop star, beginning with Blue Alice — a character, a performance, an exhibition(ist) — who lives between the museum and the public, appearing and vanishing in episodes defined by curiosity, chance, and mutual discovery.

Irene Hsiao creates performances with visual art in museums, galleries, and public spaces, a practice that includes interaction with visual artworks and experimental engagement with artists, institutions, and the public. Her work includes site-specific durational improvisation, theatrical dances, videos, and virtual performances. She is also a writer, photographer, and videographer. She is the inaugural Artist in Residence at the Smart Museum (2020-21), a 2020 Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist, 2020-21 Partner Artist in Residence and 2022 Fellow at High Concept Labs, and the recipient of a 2020 Peter Lisagor award for arts reporting and criticism.