Cao Fei

The Chinese artist Cao Fei (born 1978, Guangzhou) is one of the defining voices of her generation. Through videos, digital media, photography, installations and sculptures, the artist captures the rapid changes that have shaped China – and the Pearl River Delta in particular – since the launch of the reform and opening-up policy in 1978. For ‘Cao Fei: Testimonies to the Near Future’, her first solo exhibition in Switzerland and her largest retrospective to date in Europe, the artist transforms the Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart into a total work of art in the form of a city, where immersive installations and video worlds from her last thirty years of creative work merge.

Cao Fei is an undisputed pioneer in the creation of digital worlds. Her early works have influenced an entire generation of artists from Asia and beyond. For over two decades, she has been exploring the impact of social and technological upheavals on human life in works that have established her reputation as a leading thinker in the fields of art, media, technology and the future – ranging from video installations and digital simulations to virtual reality settings.

Her videos and, in some cases, game-based environments are set in factories, dreamscapes and visions of the future. They explore themes of labour, change and the peculiar beauty of a globalised world, and, through these themes, address questions of identity, physicality and memory. Cao Fei is interested in the influence that economic growth, technological development and globalisation have on our society, without, however, ever succumbing to pessimism about the future. At the heart of the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart are, amongst others, pioneering works such as *Whose Utopia* (2006), RMB City (since 2007), Asia One (2018), Nova (since 2019), Oz (2022) and the Hip Hop series (since 2003).

Particularly noteworthy is Cao Fei’s talent for integrating speculative and surreal elements into works that are often almost documentary in nature. This aspect is underscored by elaborate installations that bring elements from the videos into the exhibition space, thereby further blurring the boundary between physical and virtual space.

The exhibition, which spans all four floors of Haus Gegenwart, invites visitors to delve deeply into Cao Fei’s extensive body of work. It offers visitors a unique spatial experience in which the video works are not merely on display, but can be experienced in an immersive way.

The exhibition is curated by Cao Fei in collaboration with Small Production, Beijing.