Cao Fei: Blueprints

Cao Fei is a multi-media artist and filmmaker based in Beijing. Video, digital media, photography and objects all play a role in the artist’s engagement with an age of rapid technological development. The Serpentine Galleries exhibition will bring together new and existing works in an immersive, site-specific installation, expanding the themes of automation, virtuality and technology that Cao Fei continuously draws upon.

Cao Fei’s work is underpinned by an ongoing exploration of virtuality, how it has radically altered our perception of self and changed the way we understand reality. This slippage between the physical and the virtual is always present in her work; from the utopic and dystopic potentials of our modern-day cities, the escapism of users via the virtual platform, Second Life, to the alienating effects of mechanised labour in China, Cao Fei often addresses these far-reaching topics through deadpan humour and the creation of surreal encounters. Although each of Cao Fei’s worlds appear to teeter on the edge of apocalyptic uncertainty, her characters navigate these complex and chaotic realities with vigour and agency, harnessing the unique possibilities of technology in order to shape a collective future.

This project at the Serpentine Galleries will be Cao Fei’s first large-scale institutional solo exhibition in the UK.