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.
Courtesy Sprüth Magers and Gladstone Gallery. Photo: Stephen White
New Humans: Memories of the Future
Group Exhibition with Cao Fei, Cyprien Gaillard, Pamela Rosenkranz, and Andro Wekua
New Museum, New York
Through July 26, 2026
New Humans: Memories of the Future will inaugurate the New Museum’s expanded building with an exploration of artists’ enduring preoccupation with what it means to be human in the face of sweeping technological changes. New Humans will trace a diagonal history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through the work of more than 150 international artists, writers, scientists, architects, and filmmakers, highlighting key moments when dramatic technological and social changes spurred new conceptions of humanity and new visions for its possible futures.
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