Museum of Art Pudong (MAP) proudly announces its third major exhibition of the year, Cao Fei: Tidal Flux, opening to the public from June 22 to November 17, 2024. This exhibition marks MAP's first solo show dedicated to a female artist and its first major exhibition of moving images and media art since the museum's inception. For artist Cao Fei, this marks her inaugural large-scale mid-career retrospective in Shanghai, and one of her largest solo exhibitions ever staged globally.

Cao Fei is one of the most internationally acclaimed Chinese contemporary artists. In 2023, she ranked 10th on ArtReview's prestigious "Power 100" list of the art world's most influential figures. She mixes social commentary, popular aesthetics, references to Surrealism, and documentary conventions in her films and installations. Her works reflect on the rapid and developmental changes that are occurring in Chinese society today. Cao Fei is the first Chinese artist to present a solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2019). She has also held solo shows at prominent international institutions including MoMA PS1 in New York (2016), Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong (2018), the Serpentine Galleries in London (2020), Pinacoteca Contemporânea in São Paulo (2023), among others. Now, this journey continues with her latest stop at the Museum of Art Pudong.

This exhibition provides a comprehensive overview of Cao Fei's nearly 30-year artistic journey. Utilizing the entire second-floor space of the museum, the artist crafts a "non-linear" arrangement that brings the work to life through a diverse perspective. The exhibition delves into themes of "Time," "Body," and "Technology," encompassing several of Cao Fei's significant long-term projects. Highlights include her early works during the "Pearl River Delta" period, the exploration of digital and virtual realms in the "metaverse" originating from the RMB City（RMB - To be ReMember）, and her research project HX. Furthermore, the exhibition features seven pieces making their global debut, and thirteen works/series being shown in China for the first time. 

Cao Fei: Tidal Flux is produced by Shanghai Lujiazui Development (Group) Company Limited and organized by Museum of Art Pudong. The exhibition is jointly curated by a trio of renowned curators from China and abroad—Nancy Spector from the United States, Xue Tan from Hong Kong, China and Yang Beichen from Beijing, China. The exhibition design is developed by BEAU Architects, while the graphic design is created by Studio Pianpian He and Max Harvey. 

The second half of the Chinese exhibition title, pronounced "Zhou He," is derived from the classic text Guanzi: Zhouhe by 7th-century BC philosopher Guan Zhong. It embodies, through metaphorical language, the harmonious state of living in symbiosis with all that exists between heaven and earth. Meanwhile, the "Tidal" in the title symbolizes the fluctuation and continuum in time—the former connotes a scale that encompasses all things and livings across eons and the cosmos, while the latter emphasizes the fluid, relative, and altering nature of life. We shall hence understand the exhibition title "Tidal Flux" as a system of constant self-perfection and regeneration, which, beyond any doubt, aligns with the spiritual essence in Cao Fei's works—an open, inclusive, and ever-evolving worldview. 

Cao Fei acutely captures the pulse of different eras, incisively investigating contemporary reality from different perspectives. With a penetrating intuition and profound observation about Chinese society, she lends herself to prophetic insights and reflective discernment that continue to speak to our lives. She transcends the mere representation of reality, and, with her idiosyncratic creation of art, sparks off imagination and speculation. Cao Fei uses art to respond to the seismic upheavals and vigorous development that have defined China's post-reform era, and to the flow of times under globalization. From technologies to sensibilities, from the body to culture, and from daily lives to digital spatio-temporality, Cao Fei's practice constructs a kaleidoscopic and continuously growing multiworld.

The Tides of Times Radiating from the Pearl River Delta

Born into an artistic family in Guangzhou, Cao Fei's formative years coincided with the most trailblazing wave of China's Economic Reform. The last two decades of the 20th century witnessed significant changes amidst rapid development in the Pearl River Delta region: a surging desire for development attracted an influx of migrant workers, earning this region its famed title "the world's factory;" the Pearl River Delta also became a frontier of cultural heterogenization in China for a confluence of reasons: the influence of foreign culture, its geographical proximity to Hong Kong, China (Asia's most bustling hub for mainstream culture, music, and movies), and, consequently, the introduction of Western pop music enabled by the access to "Dakou records" in Guangzhou. This unique environment has directly shaped the artist's early works.

In the museum's Glass Hall on the second floor—a gallery with a spectacular view overlooking the city of Shanghai—more than a dozen works from Cao Fei's early artistic career (1995-2005) are on display. These rarely seen works include: the stage play Campus Rhapsody 2 (1995) created during her art school years, conceptual works like Dance (2001) and Talk without Speaking (2001), low-budget short films Imbalance 257 (1999) and Milk (2005), and experimental documentary San Yuan Li (2003), which chronicles Guangzhou's urban villages. They were filmed using a mobile handheld video camcorder, often featuring the artist's friends or non-professional extras. Showing an unwavering intervention in everyday environments and pertinent events, these works exemplify the artist's remarkable creative touch and capture the essence of the local scene.

Who Utopia (2006) is an important work of Cao Fei. As an artist-in-residence at the OSRAM light bulb manufacturing center in Foshan, Guangzhou, she immersed herself in factory life for six months. She gained a deep understanding of the realities faced by China's new working class, subtly approaching the individual dreams and heroism amidst the rapid social transformation against the backdrop of the Pearl River Delta's economic boom. In subsequent works Asia One and 11.11, both completed in 2018, Cao Fei continues her concern with individual loneliness and employs the factory as her "field" of research. Through these works, she sketches a new form of worker life emerging in the era of manufacturing automation.

Following her move to Beijing, Cao Fei's creative background radiated from the Pearl River Delta, becoming more complex and diverse in response to the evolving times. Her long-term research project, HX (2015-2024), almost feels like an "orchestra" of ideas drawn from her previous works. She attempts to construct an epic, polyphonic narrative, blending notions such as the discussion about identity and the body, the observation and lived experience of urban space, a close attention to labor and factories, and the obsession with technology and media. In such way, the HX project conjures a "palace of memories." This project consists of the feature film Nova (the opening film of the FIRST International Film Festival in 2020), the documentary Hongxia (2019), the virtual reality work The Eternal Wave VR (2020), and a new addition to this series, An Elegy to Hongxia (2024). Together, a special "Hongxia Universe" thus takes shape.

Cao Fei's latest ongoing project, the Dash project (working title), will be unveiled to the public for the first time. The video showcases a new concept of "agricultural futurism," where "unmanned" agriculture is brought to life through the collaborative efforts of drones hovering in the air and ground-based robots performing farming tasks, as if positioning themselves as the next generation of "farmers." Through her artistic expression, Cao Fei forges a new link between futurism and the ancient traditions of humanity. This project is slated for completion in 2025.

Worldbuilding in the Virtual and the Real

An early explorer in the virtual realm known as the "metaverse," and the world's first artist to achieve a digitalized life, Cao Fei has been working on multimedia art since before the rise of the current generation of art consumers. Since 2007, she has been mirroring the entire era into a digital millennium, constructing a series of virtual worlds: RMB City (2007-2022) is a wondrous and bustling immersive metropolis Cao Fei built by using Second Life, an online role-playing game. Her own avatar, China Tracy, serves as the guardian spirit and head proprietress of the city, an adventurous, fearless, whimsical, and dazzling digital presence.

As the "metaverse" gained wider acceptance, Cao Fei, a pioneer in such worldbuilding, returned her focus to cyberspace in 2022. In the film Meta-mentary (2022), she documents people's evolving opinions about the metaverse; in Duotopia (2022-2024), she layers and interlaces numerous utopian realms within the metaverse; then, in the two-channel video installation Oz (2022), her new avatar, an exquisite androgynous figure, is enveloped in an electrifying atmosphere. A fusion of machine, octopus, and anthropoid, this post-human creature exudes serenity.

Furthermore, Cao Fei's interest in "worldbuilding" extends beyond the digital realm into the design of the exhibition space. Her distinctive exhibition design transforms Tidal Flux into a site of integration and convergence, taking the form of an archipelago, a maze, a theater, or even a theme park. Its openness and gameplay aim to continuously encourage experiences of "disorientation" and "serendipity," facilitating an easier access for the audience to engage with Cao Fei's artworks in an interactive and immersive manner.

About Museum of Art Pudong

Located at the heart of Xiao Lujiazui, Museum of Art Pudong (MAP) broke ground on September 26, 2017 and opened to the public in July, 2021.

Invested, built, and managed by the Lujiazui Group and designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel (AJN), MAP is primarily set out to present world-class exhibitions to its audience as well as showcasing domestic artists. The four major functions of MAP include: to hold exhibitions, to promote art education, to develop cultural merchandises, and to advocate for international exchange. MAP aims to become a new cultural landmark of Shanghai and an important platform for international cultural exchange.

About the Artist

Cao Fei (b. 1978, Guangzhou) is an internationally-renowned Chinese contemporary artist, currently living in Beijing, she mixes social commentary, popular aesthetics, references to Surrealism, and documentary conventions in her films and installations. Her works reflect on the rapid and developmental changes that are occurring in Chinese society today. 

Cao Fei's works have been exhibited at a number of international biennales and triennales, including the Shanghai Biennale (2004), the Moscow Biennale (2005), the Taipei Biennial (2006), the 15th & 17th Biennale of Sydney (2006 and 2010), the Istanbul Biennial (2007), the Yokohama Triennale (2008), the 50th, 52nd & 56th Venice Biennale (2003, 2007 and 2015), the Aichi Triennale (2022), and Sharjah Biennial (2023).

Cao Fei's major projects in recent years include a solo exhibition at MoMA PS1, New York (2016), a solo show at the Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2018), a retrospective at K21 Düsseldorf (2018), a solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2019), a solo exhibition at the Serpentine Galleries, London (2020). Cao Fei's recent projects include a major retrospective at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2021), a solo exhibition at the MAXXI, the National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Rome (2021), a solo exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2022), a solo exhibition at Pinacoteca Contemporânea, São Paulo (2023), solo exhibition at SCAD Museum of Art (2024) and Lenbachhaus Munich (2024).

Cao Fei is the winner of the SCAD deFINE ART (2024) and Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2021). Cao Fei was nominated for the Hugo Boss Prize and the Future Generation Art Prize in 2010 and was awarded the "Best Young Artist" and "Best Artist" at the China Contemporary Art Award (CCAA) in 2006 and 2016 respectively. Cao Fei was on the jury of The Selection Committee for the Curatorship of the 8th Berlin Biennale (2014), the jury of The Bonnefanten Award for Contemporary (2016), the jury of Hugo Boss Asia Art Prize (2019). Cao Fei was the nominator of the Rolls-Royce Art Program Muse (2019) and the juror of Chanel Next Prize (2021 and 2024).

About the Curators

Cao Fei: Tidal Flux is jointly curated by three renowned curators from China and abroad—Nancy Spector from the United States, Xue Tan from Hong Kong, China and Yang Beichen from Beijing, China.

Nancy Spector is an Independent Curator who worked at the Guggenheim Museum as Artistic Director and Chief Curator and the Brooklyn Museum as Chief Curator. She served as Adjunct Curator of the 1997 Venice Biennale, was the co-organizer of the first Berlin Biennial in 1998, and was the U.S. Commissioner for the Venice Biennale in 2007. In a career spanning forty years, she has received five International Art Critics Awards for exhibitions and a Disruptive Innovation Award from Tribeca Film. She was awarded an Honorary Degree from Pratt Institute in 2019. She currently serves as an International Advisor to the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris.

Xue Tan is a curator, producer and writer from Hong Kong, China , she is the Chief Curator of Haus der Kunst in Munich. From 2015 -2024, Tan worked as the founding Senior Curator of Tai Kwun Contemporary, a leading contemporary art centre in Asia, she oversaw the exhibition programme and special projects, and established a unique live and media programme. Tan recently curated solo presentations of Maria Hassabi, Pan Daijing, Tino Sehgal, Francis Alÿs and Cao Fei; her group exhibitions focus on the subjects of ecology, feminism, gender, liveness, and technology. Tan has led curatorial projects across continents, including with the MUSEUM MMK für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt and the Center for Curatorial Studies of Bard College in New York.

Dr. Yang Beichen is a researcher and a curator based in Beijing. He is currently the director of the Macalline Center of Art (MACA) and an associate professor at the Central Academy of Drama. Prior to that, he was a senior editor of Artforum China (2012-2017) , a research fellow at the New Century Art Foundation (NCAF, 2019-2021), and member of the Thought Council at the Fondazione Prada. He has curated exhibitions at various institutions around the world (Julia Stoschek Collection, Nationalgalerie Berlin, Prada Rong Zhai, etc.) His curatorial practices grow out of and attest to his multidisciplinary academic approaches that focus on examining the agency and potentialities of the media art in the context of contemporary technology and ecology.