Coa Fei Show
On Thursday, August 25th we went to MOMA PS1 to see Cao Fei’s first solo American museum show.
Cao Fei is a well-known Chinese, young artist from the industrial city of Guangzhou, who is currently, living in Beijing. In 2001, she received a BFA from Guangzhou Academy of Art. Her father, a famous Chinese realist sculptor has greatly influenced her work and introduced Fei to video as a medium.
Through media like video, animation and Second life Internet VR, Cao’s recurring themes are the effects that the rapidly growing Chinese economy and globalization have on the life of the young Chinese generations. Moreover, she portrays the alienation, desires and illusions that they have, by mixing fantasy and reality.
The show at PS1 comprises the artist’s first works, a series of videos, produced from 1998 to 2003 that analyzes Chinese culture and its rejection to its own traditions. These videos are also characterized by the absence of global references.
In 2004, Cao released COSplayers a video that focuses on teenagers dressed as Japanese characters. The use of foreign references marks a change in the way that she approached her recurring topics. Her oeuvre acquires global dimensions, which are reaffirmed by works such as RMB city and iMirror. These projects were developed on Second Life, a popular western Internet Virtual Reality program.
After that, she produced Haze and Fog, a fictional 46 min Art film that used tango music and Zombie culture to explore modern Chinese global culture. This work focuses on the confusion, alienation and desires of Chinese youths.
In 2014, she created La Town, a post-apocalyptic fictional video that contains many western elements, for example, a German Supermarket, a MacDonald and a French dialogue based on the French film Hiroshima.
In conclusion, the use of Internet culture as a medium and the fact that most of Cao Fei’s works are primarily relisted abroad, have called her to have for a more global approach into her oeuvre.