Whiskey Chow is a London-based artist, activist and Chinese drag king. Chow’s practice engages with political issues and related topics: from queer(ing) masculinity, problematizing the nation-state across geographic boundaries, interrogating stereotypical projections of Chinese/Asian identity, to enabling empowerment by queer-reading ancient Chinese myth. Her work is interdisciplinary: performance, moving image, experimental sound, installation, and experimental printmaking.
Chow’s curatorial and pedagogical practice also both feed into her “artivist” ambition. The word “artivist” means making art with a heart of activism, continuously negotiating with systematic inequality and making space for marginalised minorities.
As artist-curator, Chow launched, curated and performed in ‘Queering Now 酷兒鬧’ 2020; a curatorial programme amplifying and championing queer Chinese/Asian diaspora voices in the West.
Trained in Performance and graduated from the Royal College of Art, Chow has also been teaching there as an Associate Lecturer since 2019.
Chow’s involvement in feminist and LGBTQ activism in China in her early 20s (‘For Vaginas’ Sake 將陰道獨白到底 (2013)’ - original Chinese version of The Vagina Monologues; curated the first Chinese LGBTQ music festival ‘Lover Comrades Concert 愛人同志音樂會 (2013)’ in Guangzhou) has deeply shaped her creative approach: informed by her queer migrant identity and art-activism; it is intersectional, diasporic, and offers a non-Western perspective within a western context.
Chow performed/ showcased works across the UK and internationally including Yorkshire Sculpture Park, V&A, Tate Modern, Tate Britain and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul).
Recent exhibitions include: you must everywhere wander 你必顧盼, V&A Friday Late: The Body Beautiful, Victoria and Albert Museum; Look Like Myself Enough? Centre for British Photography, London (2023); you must everywhere wander 你必顧盼, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (2022); Queering Now 酷兒鬧 2021: Dreamality (online); EXiS Film and Video Festival, Seoul (2021); Do You Hear The People Dream?, Wysing Polyphonic Festival, Online; The Moon is Warmer than the Sun, Queering Now 酷兒鬧, Rich Mix, London (2020); Unhomeliness, Tate Modern, London; Whiskey the Conqueror, Tate Britain, London (2018); Purely Beautiful New Era (ft. Haocheng Wu), Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Great Conversation, Uppsala Konstmuseum, Uppsala (2017).