Cao Fei, born 1978 in Guangzhou province living in Beijing, was a wanderer between the worlds, while her father had the privilege earlier when she was young to work in Hong Kong. This confronts and influenced her withe Western pop-culture. Today Cao Fei is renowned as one of the most popular and influential Chinese artists. She is the face of the new generation of artists. 2016 she exhibited at MoMA PS1 New York, at Secession Vienna 2015, at Contemporary Art Center of South Australis 2014, at Tate Modern Londond 2013, at Surrey Art Gallery Vancouver 2012, at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Kansas City 2011, Institute of Modern Art Brisbane 2009. 2010 she was finalist for the Hugo Boss Prize at Guggenheim Foundation New York.
Being the youngest—and the only Chinese—artist commissioned to create a BMW Art Car is among the most prosaic ways Cao Fei is exceptional, but the approach she took to the project in 2017 is telling. Leaving the carbon-black paint job untouched, her design is visible only via an augmented reality app. Making the fantastical visible is a recurring theme in Cao’s practice. Notably, she made use of the online world Second Life to create the utopian RMB City (2008–11), a carnivalesque megalopolis inspired by the heady development of China’s rich east coast cities.
Cao also explores the disconnect between people’s fantasy and real lives in video and photography works such as Whose Utopia? (2006), where she asked factory workers to act out expressions of individuality (dancing ballet, playing guitar, and so on), and COSPlayers (2004), where she photographed fantasy roleplayers in the grim, over-industrialized landscapes of southern China. Now, Cao is perfectly positioned to comment on the emerging techno-authoritarian China enabled by ubiquitous e-commerce, oppressive social credit systems, and new identification technologies.
- Cao fei Works of art
