Cao Fei

Cao Fei (; born 1978) is a Chinese multimedia artist born in Guangzhou. Her work, which includes video, performance, and digital media, examines the daily life of Chinese citizens born after the Cultural Revolution. Her work explores China's widespread internet culture as well as the borders between dreams and reality. Cao has captured the rapid social and cultural transformation of contemporary China, highlighting the impact of foreign influences from the USA and Japan.
Some of her work is owned and displayed by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. In 2021 she won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize.
Career.
Early years.
Cao received her B.F.A. from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2001. During her time there, Cao presented her first performance work, "The Little Spark" (1998), set in the affiliated Middle School of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. She then created her first film, "Imbalance 257" (1999), which displayed the current generation's penchant for rejecting deep-rooted Chinese traditions. One year later, Cao produced another video work, "Chain Reaction" (2000). She described the film as "a view of schizophrenia", analyzing "the power of evil in human nature."
After graduating in 2001, Cao produced several notable works, including "Rabid Dogs" (2002) and "Burners" (2003). "Rabid Dogs" featured actors wearing costume makeup to look like dogs working and interacting in an office. The actors mimic office work while also behaving like dogs, sniffing one another, fighting, and attempting to become sexual. The artist suggested that the work was a metaphor for the modern office, saying "We are surely a miserable pack of dogs and we are willing to act as beasts that are locked in the trap of modernization." The artist noted that "Burners", a two-minute video focusing on the theme of human desire, "demonstrates the presence of privacy in soft porn and parodies the notion of male narcissism." Cao focused on the modern paradox of China's rapid economic growth and social marginalization, producing the 2003 experimental documentary "San Yuan Li" (三元里) with Ou Ning. Shot in a rural village nestled in the industrial skyline of Guangzhou, the film examines the effects of development on traditional agrarian lifestyles. The work was commissioned for and exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2013.
In the photo series and video work "COSPlayers" (2004), Cao depicts Chinese teenagers cosplaying as anime characters in the industrial landscape of Guangzhou. The Internet's power to create subcultures across China influenced the artist greatly. In 2006, Cao produced her "Hip Hop series" (2006), an exposé of the underground influence of American hip hop in China.
"Whose Utopia" (2006).
The 2006 film "Whose Utopia" is one of Cao's most pivotal works. It explores the contrast between the everyday experiences and the aspirations of assembly line workers at a light bulb factory in the Pearl River Delta region of China. The film opens with shifting views of an automated production line factory workers performing menial tasks. The artist interviews various workers, asking them their reasons for working at the plant.
These conversations then introduce a series of performances. Each performance is a chance for the individual to showcase their dreams, fantasies and talents apart from their everyday life. Cao Fei explains, the film is "not about exposé and not about political correctness." Rather, she aims to look at the lives of workers from multiple perspectives. For the worker, the performance is an opportunity to escape and reinvent oneself against the conformist backdrop of the factory. Cao likens the practice to creating an avatar.
By using montage, music and imagery, she presents a thorough understanding of contemporary Chinese society. In recent years, Chinese migrant workers have flocked to factories to take part in the hastily growing economy. "Whose Utopia" suggests a perpetual disparity between the confinement of an industrial lifestyle and the individual utopia. This work is currently owned by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Later work.
Cao's art has extended to the virtual world in her three-part video "i.Mirror" (2007), where she documented the life of her avatar, China Tracy, and her romantic engagement with another avatar, Hug Yue in the virtual world Second Life. The videos feature China Tracy and Hug Yue in both realistic and fantastic locations, conversational excerpts, and the revelation of "First Life" identities.
In 2007, Cao planned and developed RMB City, a virtual city in Second Life. Launched in 2008, and open to the public since January 2009, RMB City is a platform for experimental creative activities, one in which Cao and her collaborators use different mediums to test the boundaries between virtual and physical existence. Collaborators were for example Uli Sigg, who received a virtual city hall or Rem Koolhaas. Within this virtual city art institutions could organize online biennales or similar virtual gatherings. "RMB: A Second Life Planning By China Tracy" was acquired by The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum for its contemporary art collection in 2008.
From 2009 to 2015, Cao produced the works "RMB City Opera" (2009), "East Wind" (2011), "Haze and Fog" (2013), and "Rumba II: Nomad" (2015). In 2014, Cao presented a show and film entitled "La Town" at Lombard Fried Gallery. The show included the film and photographs from the set of the filming of "La Town: The New Desert". The film depicts a world disrupted by industrialization. It begins in an elaborate, handmade, miniature city with a post-apocalyptic scene of a destroyed McDonald's restaurant on top of a small apartment building while figurines mill about in the rubble of wrecked cars and buildings.
In 2018, Cao filmed "Prison Architect" in Tai Kwun, Hong Kong, formerly a colonial police and prison complex and now a non-profit art centre. The film was inspired by the novelist and curator Hu Fang's short story "The Consolation of Imprisonment", which led her to contemplate "how we live with the notion of 'imprisonment'—imprisonment in a physical cell, 'non-prison' prisons, and a prison transformed into a cultural centre".
In 2022, Cao was commissioned by the museum in progress to create a new work for the ongoing series of artistic interventions to the on-stage safety curtain at the Vienna State Opera. Cao's piece, "The New Angel" (2022), consists of a massive portrait of an animated avatar she designed.
Exhibitions.
Cao has staged numerous solo shows at galleries and museums in China, the United States, and internationally. Cao's notable solo shows include "COSplayers" (2006), Para Site, Hong Kong; "Cao Fei: Whose Utopia?" (2007), Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California; "Cao Fei: Utopia" (2009), Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; "Cao Fei" (2016), MoMA PS1, New York; and "Cao Fei: Blueprints" (2020), Serpentine Galleries, London.
She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (2003, 2007, 2011, and 2015); Biennale of Sydney (2006, 2010); and Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2008).
Art market.
Sold works include "RMB: A Second Life City Planning No.1" (2007) sold for $16,128 at Sotheby's Hong Kong in October 2015 and "Silent Curse" (+3 other works), sold for $24,192, also at Sotheby's Hong Kong in October 2009. Others include "Murderess" (+2 additional works from the "Cosplayers" series), sold for $17,741 in 2009 and "Mirage," sold for $21,890 in 2007.