The films, videos, photos, digital projects, drawings and complex multimedia installations of Cao Fei (*1978) explore far-reaching social changes in our era of globalization, urbanization and digitalization. The Beijing-based artist’s oeuvre sheds light on the ways people react to these developments and integrate them into their lives. Operating as both artistic invention and social documentation, the visual language of her work verges on the fantastic, with a melancholy atmosphere leavened by moments of humor and surreal beauty.
Cao Fei, Hip Hop: Shanghai, 2025
Produced by nowness
Produced by nowness
Cao Fei
Testimonies to the Near Future
Kunstmuseum Basel
May 30–October 11, 2026
The Chinese artist Cao Fei (*1978, Guangzhou) is one of the defining voices of her generation. For her first solo exhibition in Switzerland, she transforms the Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart into an immersive total work of art in the form of a city blending imposing installations and video universes from her oeuvre of the past twenty years. Cao Fei’s achievement as a pioneering creator of digital worlds is uncontested. Her early works have influenced an entire generation of artists from Asia and beyond. For over two decades, she has made art – from video installations and digital simulations to virtual-reality settings – that grapples with the impact on human life of wrenching societal and technological transformations, establishing her renown as a leading thinker about art, media, technology, and the future.
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