Cao Fei

Cao Fei (Chinese: 曹斐; born 1978) is a Chinese multimedia artist born in Guangzhou. Cao's work, which includes video, performance, and digital media, examines the daily life of Chinese citizens born after the Cultural Revolution. Her work explores China's widespread internet culture as well as the border between dream and reality. Cao has captured the rapid social and cultural transformation of contemporary China, highlighting the impact of foreign influences from America and Japan.

Cao received her B.F.A. from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2001. During her time there, Cao presented her first performance work, The Little Spark (1998), set in the affiliated Middle School of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. She then created her first film, Imbalance 257 (1999), which displayed the current generation’s penchant for rejecting deep-rooted Chinese traditions. One year later, Cao produced another video work, Chain Reaction (2000). She described the film as "a view of schizophrenia", analyzing "the power of evil in human nature."

After graduating in 2001, Cao produced several notable works, including Burners (2003), a two-minute video focusing on the theme of human desire. The artist noted that the short film "demonstrates the presence of privacy in soft porn and parodies the notion of male narcissism."

Cao then focused on the modern paradox of China’s rapid economic growth and social marginalization, producing the 2003 experimental documentary San Yuan Li (三元里) with Ou Ning. Shot in a rural village nestled in the industrial skyline of Guangzhou, the film examines the effects of development on traditional agrarian lifestyles. The work was commissioned for and exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2013.

In the photo series and video work COSPlayers (2004), Cao depicts Chinese teenagers cosplaying as anime characters in the industrial landscape of Guangzhou. The Internet’s power to create subcultures across China influenced the artist greatly. In 2006, Cao produced her Hip Hop series (2006), an exposé of the underground influence of American hip hop in China.

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