Book of the exhibition Journey, held at frac île-de-france / le plateau ( March 13 – May 25, 2008)
Among the most important Chinese artists of her generation, Cao Fei presented her first solo exhibition in France at Le Plateau, after attracting considerable attention in Lyon, Venice and Istanbul biennales. This exhibition gives the public the opportunity to discover proliferating videos that use a mix of text, everyday objects and classical sculpture. Only just turned thirty, and influenced by advertising, cinema and TV – from Taiwan and Hong Kong – as well as video games and American rap, Cao Fei has opted for living in China and making the most of the new technologies now booming in her homeland. Her familiarity with “low” and pop culture does not prevent the inclusion in her work of traditional elements drawn from theatre, opera and dance, and she delights in combining these different worlds in denunciations of the Communist utopias of the past and the rise of capitalism in China in the third millennium. Shuttling back and forth between the virtual and the real, Cao Fei’s oeuvre strives to lay bare the rites, the functioning and the mechanisms of en entire society in a state of perpetual change.
The book Journey, Cao Fei has been co-edited in 2008 with the collaboration of the artist’s gallery, Vitamin Creative Space (GuangZhou, China).