Cao Fei

Cao Fei (born 1978, 曹斐) is a Chinese multimedia artist, born in Guangzhou, China. She received a BFA from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2001.[1]

Career

Cao created the film Imbalance 257 in 1999 while still a student.[2] She directed and produced the 2003 experimental documentary San Yuan Li (三元里) with Ou Ning. The film examines the effects of development in Guangzhou on the village of San Yuan Li.[3]

Her 2004 work COSPlayers consisted of a photo series and DVD depicting teenagers cosplaying as anime characters.[4][5] The players believe that their costumes give them special powers; the work follows them throughout the Chinese city.[6]

Her 2006 work Whose Utopia? explores the contrast of the workaday reality of lighting manufacturing plant employees in China’s Pearl River Delta with their aspirations.[7]

Cao's art has extended to the virtual world Second Life. In her 2007 three-part work i.Mirror, she documents the life of her avatar China Tracy and her romantic involvement with another avatar, Hug Yue.[8] Cao also planned and developed RMB City, a virtual city in Second Life.[2] 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.[2]

In 2014, she 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 film begins with a post-apocalyptic scene of a destroyed McDonalds restaurant on top of a small apartment building while figurines mill about in the rubble of wrecked cars and buildings. The film follows the world of darkness following the apparent disruption.[9]

References

  1. ↑ "Cao Fei". Art21. PBS. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Kino, Carol (June 2, 2011). "Chinese Life as Child’s Play". New York Times. Retrieved March 9, 2015.
  3. ↑ "SAN YUAN LI, A Village Trapped Within A City". MediaNoche. Retrieved 9 March 2015.
  4. ↑ McCahill, Timothy (November 2007). "Beyond Tomorrow: Cao Fei". W Magazine.
  5. ↑ Keisch, Martine (2011). "Cao Fei". Rethinking Contemporary Art and Multicultural Education (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. pp. 94–96. ISBN 1-136-89030-0.
  6. ↑ "COSPLayers and the Power of Costumes". Public Delivery.
  7. ↑ "Cao Fei". Tate. October 2014.
  8. ↑ Heartney, Eleanor (2014). "Spellbound: Cao Fei". The Reckoning: Women Artists of the New Millennium. Prestel Verlag. ISBN 3-641-13343-2.
  9. ↑ "Enter Cao Fei’s Dreamlike World at Lombard Freid Gallery". Artsy Editorial. October 2014.

External links