Biography
Born in 1978 in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, Cao Fei graduated from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art in 2001. She lives and works in Beijing.
Cao Fei is one of the most innovative Chinese artists to have emerged on the international scene. She mixes social commentary, popular aesthetics, references to Surrealism, and documentary conventions in her films and installations. Her works reflect on the rapid growth and development of Chinese society today, and explore perception and reality in places as diverse as a Chinese factory and the virtual world. Applying strategies of sampling, role play, and documentary filmmaking to capture individuals’ longings and the ways in which they imagine themselves—as hip-hop musicians, costumed characters, or digitized alter egos—Cao Fei reveals the discrepancy between reality and dream, and the discontent and disillusionment of China’s younger generation.
Fascinated by the virtual world of "Second Life", Cao Fei has created and designed her own virtual utopia, “RMB City” (2007–11), where she is both participant and observer through her “Second Life” avatar, China Tracy, who acts as a guide, philosopher, and tourist. Cao Fei’s art practices explore the fluidity of a world in which cultures have mixed and diverged in rapid evolution. Her strong interest in popular culture, technological evolution, and urban transformation enables her to integrate the artistic process with specific social spaces and communities, turning her projects into platforms for dramatizing collective dreams. This is exemplified in HX, a nearly decade-long project (2015-2024) set in a vanished cinema Hongxia, where Cao Fei seeks to create dreams and memories of life and destiny amid the rapid transformations of reality.
Cao Fei’s recent solo exhibitions and projects include “Cao Fei:My City is Yours”, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; “Cao Fei: Tidal Flux”, Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai, 2024; “CAO FEI. META-MENTARY”, Lenbachhaus, Munich, 2024; “Cao Fei: the future is not a dream”, Contemporary Pinacoteca, Grand Gallery, São Paulo,2023; “Ice Room Lagrange”, Zhiwu, Shanghai, 2022; “Safety Curtain”, Vienna State Opera, Vienna, 2022; “Asia One”, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenaghen, 2022; “Cao Fei:Supernova”, The National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome, 2021; “Cao Fei:Staging the Era”, UCCA Beijing, Beijing, 2021; “Blueprints”, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2020; “Cao Fei: Fú Chá”, National Gallery Singapore, Singapore, 2020; “HX”, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2019; “Cao Fei”, K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, 2018; “A hollow in a world too full”, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, 2018; “Cao Fei”, MoMA PS1, New York, 2016; ect. Her works have been exhibited at a number of international biennales and triennales, including Shanghai Biennale (2004), Moscow Biennale (2005), Taipei Biennale (2006), the 15th & 17th Biennale of Sydney (2006 and 2010), Istanbul Biennial (2007), Yokohama Triennale (2008), the 50th, 52nd & 56th Venice Biennale (2003, 2007 and 2015) and Aichi Triennale (2022). She was the first Chinese artist to receive the BMW Art Car Project.
She was a nominee for the Future Generation Art Prize 2010 and the finalist of Hugo Boss Prize 2010. She received the Chinese Contemporary Art Award (CCAA) Best Young Artist Award in 2006, Best Artist Award in 2016, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2021 and the SCAD deFINE ART Award in 2024. She was also the recipient of Piedra de Sal Award at Cuenca Biennale in 2016.

Website: www.caofei.com
Selected Works

Selected Works
Moving Image Work
Imbalance 257 (1999) video stills
"It is the typical stance of this generation, with its sensitivity and impulse, to try to blur the boundaries of all existing criteria and truths, to turn seemingly rationality into absurdity, and to mock at the given reality and the 'legal' matters: either the system or those who drag on with their lives under the system. I owe my courage to the restless adolescence that compels me to tear away any existing rulrs which block the way to our inner reality. Imbalance is an experience naked to us, an experience that might not be popular among Chinese college student today. It restricts us, transforms us, and forces us to expand and to change. It is the formula of a chain of events, the decease of adolescence, the edge of personal relationship, and the intermedium between bliss and despair."
Cao Fei
Imbalance 257
1999
Single channel video ( 4:3, color, with sound)
25 min 40 sec
Video stills from Chain Reaction (2000)
"Chain Reaction is a kind of independent thinking itself. Since everyone has his or her own experience and values, I call the world of Chain Reaction 'a view of schizophrenia'. Most of the images of the video surpass, as well as imitate daily life experience absurdly. e lm is to analyze and oppose evil by the way of using the power of evil inside human nature."
Cao Fei
Chain Reaction
2000
Single channel video (4:3, color, with sound)
5 min 25 sec
Video stills from Talk without Speaking (2001)
"When speaking become difficult, hand language work as not only tools of communication, but also the content of thinking. Hand language is a kind of language that has surpassed expression itself."
Cao Fei
Talk without Speaking
2001
Single channel video (4:3, color, with sound)
2 min 25 sec
Video stills from View on the Move (2001)
"Watching the light floating before you, staring and feeling, then you will find the rhythm of light, just like the uneven breathing. One will be sympathetic with even a shape, an object or a light. What I eager to catch is the image and the changing of it. It is the light, wind, substance and the technology that cause the change. My exploration of View on the Move completely comes from the vision itself."
Cao Fei
View on the Move
2001
Single channel video (5:4, color, with sound)
5 min 20 sec
Video stills from Public Space: Give Me a Kiss (2002)
"Thank you, take a look at me, give you, a kisses …… to you, a kisses ……"
Cao Fei
Public Space: Give Me a Kiss
2002
Single channel video (4:3, black and white, with sound)
4 min 58 sec
Video stills from Hip Hop: Guangzhou (2003)
Cao Fei
Hip Hop: Guangzhou
2003
Single channel video (5:4, color, with sound)
3 min 28 sec
Video stills from Cosplayers (2004)
"All COSPLAYERS are very young, with dreams in their heads, spending all their waking hours in the virtual world of video games from a very early age. Hence when they eventually grow up, they discover they are living a life style frowned upon and rejected by society and family members alike. With no channels open to express their feeling and aspirations they resort to escapism and, becoming alienated and out of touch, they turn into ever more unbecoming characters. However, in that moment when they are turned into genies, chivalrous knights, fairy princesses, or geeks, the pains of reality are assuaged, even if the "real" world they are standing on has not changed to the slightest."
Cao Fei
Cosplayers
2004
Single channel video (4:3, color, with sound)
9 min 12 sec
Father (2005) video stills
Cao Fei
Father
2005
Single channel video ( 4:3, colour, with sound)
88 min 10 sec
Production stills from Hip Hop: Fukuoka (2005)
Cao Fei
Hip Hop: Fukuoka
2005
Single channel video (5:4, color, with sound)
7 min 41 sec
Video stills from Milkman (2005)
"In my description, A Ming was a milk deliverer, but in his own description, he was a man singed for living.
I provided A Ming a role at the bottom of society, mixed with oppression and dream, on the other hand, A MING provided me his realistic situation without reserve, which is lowliness, isolation and frustration.
A Ming, a sprat, a real person, he enjoy his life with his jocular singing and humorous dancing."
Cao Fei
Milkman
2005
Single channel video (5:4, color, with sound)
18 min 58 sec
Production stills from Hip Hop: New York (2006)
Cao Fei
Hip Hop: New York
2003
Single channel video (5:4, color, with sound)
5 min 15 sec
Production stills of Nù (2006)
"Despite all the shared experiences on this journey, embarked upon by the three in a bid to vanish from their cities, the fervour and energy they had partaken of will gradually fade away with the passing of time. They had managed to make their way to their final destination together, and at the point of arrival, their wishes had also come to an end. Now, each of them has rematerialized back in their respective cities. Yet they can clearly remember the trip they had taken together, their youthful and resolute obstinacy. From time to time, they are stricken by a sudden flash of doubt which inflicts them with a temporary sense of helplessness. How many times do we get to experience something like this in this life?"
Cao Fei
Nù
2006
Single channel video, 4:3, colour, with sound
52 min 46 sec
Video stills from Whose Utopia
"Their utopia further exemplifies how the wider and wider globalization is reshaping the Pearl Delta River area, and even the whole China."
Cao Fei
Whose Utopia
2006
Single channel video (5:4, color, with sound)
20 min 20 sec
Production still from i. Mirror (2007)
"It's perhaps no longer important to draw the line between the virtual and the real, as the border between the two has been blurred. In the virtual land, we are not what we originally are, and yet we remain unchanged. We always worry about the virtual space's erosion of reality, but hopefully there's new possibility of combination in our electronic second life, a new force that transcends this mortal coil. On the reality's end of this combined ultra- space there is still love for simplicity and the pursuit of freedom. God loves people, but we are also each other's salvation."
Cao Fei (SL Avatar: China Tracy)
i. Mirror
2007
A Second Life Machinima (Single channel video, 4:3, color, with sound)
28 min
Production still from Live in RMB City (2009)
"A fantastic, exciting and unpredictable journey, the video Live in RMB City follows the first breaths, fears and curiosities of newly born China Sun, the baby of China Tracy, in Second Life. The camera follows baby China Sun's wanderings and explorations in a revived RMB City, inspired by brand new additions created by a team of artist, writer, architect, and philosopher collaborators, and infused with a fresh stream of life."
Cao Fei (SL Avatar: China Tracy)
Live in RMB City
2009
A Second Life Machinima (Single channel video, 4:3, color, with sound)
24 min 50 sec
Video stills from East Wind (2011)
Cao Fei
East Wind
2011
Single channel video (16:9, color, with sound)
11 min 14 sec
Video stills from Shadow Life
Cao Fei
Shadow Life
2011
HDV, 16:9, black and white, with sound
10 min
Production stills of Haze and Fog (2013)
"Cao Fei's 'Haze and Fog' is a new type of zombie movie set in modern China made by one of the most important Chinese artists working today. Working with film, photography, installation and performance Cao Fei probes her personal and cultural relationship to metropolitan China."
Cao Fei
Haze and Fog
2013
HDV, colour, with sound
46 min 30 sec
Video stills from La Town (2014)
"La Town, struck by unknown disaster – where without sunlight, time froze. Polar night was all encompassing, so the few instances of white nights have been momentously recorded in the town’s history. Yet, through the drifting of time and space, various countries have rewritten La Town’s history, and details have been neglected. Now, the story of the small town’s past – love affairs, politics, life, demons and disasters – have all been sealed beneath the museum’s vitrines, the historical “specimens” becoming an authoritative but limited interpretation of this town’s history."
Cao Fei
La Town
2014
Single channel HD video (16:9, color with sound)
42 min 13 sec
Video stills from Rumba II: Nomad (2015)
"In the video, several domestic vacuum cleaning robots are released at urban fringe. The robots navigate randomly in a demolishing area - a scene that we already witness and it could be found in different area under urbanization; a scene that is exciting and also being the norm in China.
The robots - visitors from the outer space, arrive in our world. By taking in the dust and ashes at the urban fringe, the land reality is collected and made into a sample; a sample that conveys our all time obsession and celebration of modern contemporary."
Cao Fei
Rumba II: Nomad
2015
Single channel HD video (16:9, color with sound)
14 min 16 sec
Video stills from Asia One (2018)
"In 2006, I created a video work Whose Utopia based on my on-site research in Simens’ OSRAM light builb factory in Foshan, China. Eleven years later, I chose JD.com, a famous private company in China as a paradigm for my work. This project probes the potentials of logistics, a crucial link in the chains of modern industries, to connect the present and the future, thence to further reveal the existence within system (individuality on the assembly line; collectivity under fine division of labour), humanity in technology (the men behind the unmanned), future/utopia in the reality, alongside the future of Internet, they present to us a possible future business and even an ecosystem in the society."
Cao Fei
Asia One
2018
Single channel HD video (2.35:1, color, with sound)
63 min 20 sec
Production still from Prison Architect (2018)
Cao Fei
Prison Architect
2018
Single channel HD video (16:9, color with sound)
58 min 48 sec
Stage photo from Nova (2019)
"A computer engineering company in the city of Nova, with the support of foreign experts, undertakes a secret mission - turning humans into a large-scale digitally intercepting and message collecting medium. A scientist who is part of the project, tries to make a great leap forward in this advanced technology. He experiments on his son but fails. The son turns into a digital soul whom exists in a computerized world, moving between the past and future, dreams and reality..."
Cao Fei
Nova
2019
Single channel HD video (2.35:1, color with sound)
97 min 13 sec
The quoted text above is taken from the artist’s statement.
All works of art by Cao Fei © the artist
Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space
Exhibitions & Projects
Cao Fei: Photographic Journey (Season Two)
October 8, 2025 - Now
Mirrored Gardens, Guangzhou
Cao Fei: Testimonies to the Near Future
Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel
May 30, 2026 - November 10, 2026
Cao Fei:My City is Yours
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
30 November, 2024 - 13 April, 2025
Exhibitions & Projects
Cao Fei: Photographic Journey (Season Two)
October 8, 2025 - Now
Mirrored Gardens, Guangzhou
Cao Fei: Testimonies to the Near Future
Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel
May 30, 2026 - November 10, 2026
Cao Fei:My City is Yours
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
30 November, 2024 - 13 April, 2025
Cao Fei: Tidal Flux
Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai
21 June, 2024 - 17 November, 2024
CAO FEI. META-MENTARY
Lenbachhaus, Munich
13 April, 2024 - 8 September, 2024
Cao Fei: the future is not a dream
Sep 02, 23 - Apr 14, 24
Grand Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil
Cao Fei: Ice Room Lagrange
November 13, 2022 to Febrary 12, 2023
ZiWU the Bund, Shanghai
Safety Curtain
2022/2023
Vienna State Opera, Vienna
Cao Fei: Asia One
17 sep - 19 feb 2023
Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen
Cao Fei: Supernova
December 16 2021 to May 08 2022
The National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome
Cao Fei: Staging the Era
March 12 to June 6 2021
UCCA Beijing, Beijing
Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2021
Deutsche Börse Headquarter, Frankfurt. The Photographers' Gallery, London
25 January 2021 to 26 September 2021
Cao Fei: Blueprints
4 Mar - 17 May 2020
Serpentine Gallery, London
Artist Cinemas: Crashing into the Future, convened by Cao Fei
February 22 through April 5, 2021
Cao Fei
Oct 6, 2018 - Jan 13, 2019
K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf, Germany
A hollow in a world too full
8 SEP 2018 - 4 JAN 2019
Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong
Extreme. Nomads - RAY 2018
24 May ― 9 September 2018
MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany
Cao Fei: HX
6 Jun – 26 Aug 2019
The Centre Pompidou, Paris
Cao Fei
Oct 6, 2018 — Jan 13, 2019
K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf,Germany
A hollow in a world too full
8 SEP 2018 - 4 JAN 2019
Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong
I Was Raised on the Internet
23 Jun — 14 Oct 2018
Museum of Art Chicago MCA,Chicago, U.S
Extreme. Nomads - RAY 2018
24 May ― 9 September 2018
MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany
One Hand Clapping
4 May — 21 Oct 2018
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
A World in a Grain of Sand
28 Apr — 12 May 2018
Fosun Foundation,shanghai
Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture VII: Cities Grow in Difference
15 Dec 2017 — 15 Mar 2018
Nantou Old Town, Shenzhen
Simultaneous Eidos - Guangzhou Image Triennial 2017
15 Dec 2017 — 15 Mar 2018
Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou
M+ Screenings: City Limits to explore urbanisation in Asia this August
4 — 6 Aug 2017
Broadway Cinematheque in Yau Ma Tei, Hong Kong
Talking Pictures: Camera-Phone Conversations Between Artists
23 Jun – 17 Nov 2017
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
Canton Express
23 Jun – 10 Sept 2017
M+ Pavilion, West Kowloon Cultural District, Hong Kong
Yinchuan Biennale 2016 — For an Image, Faster than Light
9 Sept – 12 Dec 2016
MOCA Yinchuan, Yinchuan
Cao Fei
3 Apr – 31 Aug 2016
MoMA PS1, New York
Digging a Hole in China
20 Mar – 26 June 2016
OCAT Shenzhen, Shenzhen
Bentu, Chinese artists at a time of turbulence and transformation
27 Jan – 2 May 2016
Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris
The Collection, A selection of Chinese works
27 Jan – 5 Sept 2016
Foundation Louis Vuitton, Paris
Nonfigurative
12 Nov 2015 – 28 Feb 2016
Shanghai 21st Century Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai
15 Rooms
25 Sep – 8 Nov 2015
Long Museum, Shanghai
"Cao Fei. I watch that worlds pass by", Daimler Art Collection Artist Book #7
15 Sep 2015
Daimler Art Collection, Berlin
Cao Fei: Splendid River
2 Jul – 30 Aug 2015
Secession, Vienna
All the World’s Futures - 56th International Art Exhibition
9 May – 22 Nov 2015
56th La Biennale di Venezia, Venice
"Same Old, Brand New" ICC lightshow by Cao Fei
13 March – 31 May 2015
International Commerce Centre (ICC), Hong Kong
Cao Fei : Haze and Fog
21 September to 16 November 2013
Eastside Projects, Birmingham
RMB City

Cao Fei (SL: China Tracy):RMB City (2007-2011)
RMB City

Reflections

Cao Fei, Nova 01, photogrph, 2019
Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space.
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Further Reading
Cao Fei: HX. Beijing: The Pavilion, London: Serpentine Galleries, English, 2020.
Cao Fei. I watch that worlds pass by. Cologne: Snoeck Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, English, 2015.
Cao Fei. Splendid River. Vienna: Secession, Berlin: Revolver Publishing, English, 2015.
Cao Fei. Nù. Guangzhou: Vitamin Creative Space, Chinese and English, 2007.
Press & Articles
“Cao Fei on the limits of truth and virtuality.” In Artforum, March 15, 2020, English, 2020.
More >>
Video Documentation
UCCA Exhibition | "Cao Fei: Staging the Era" Virtual Guided Tour



































