Text by CLOT Magazine
Cao Fei is a multimedia artist and filmmaker based in Beijing. Her work reflects on the rapid and chaotic changes that are occurring in Chinese society today. Fei’s first large-scale institutional solo exhibition in the UK, Blueprints, opens on 4 March at Serpentine Galleries. Through the use of installation, film, and virtual reality work, Blueprints brings together new and existing works by Cao Fei to create multiple worlds, navigate physical and virtual spaces, and consider the changing landscapes of cities in China and beyond.
For me virtuality is a means to express myself, to understand reality, which is what I’m interested in. I use writing and film too, but we are living in an age of rapid technology and in this context, we need to know that virtuality has changed the way reality works. And to do this we need to be part of it. –Cao Fei
Three new works will be at the centre of this exhibition, including The Eternal Wave, a new Virtual Reality artwork produced in collaboration with Acute Art, a site-specific installation based on elements of Cao Fei’s Beijing studio, and Fei’s latest film Nova. These interconnected works are the culmination of Cao Fei’s extensive research examining the social history and urban transformation in Beijing over the last five years. This new body of work will be presented along with a selection of Fei’s previous film works, expanding the themes of automation, virtuality and technology that she draws upon in her wider practice.
