Cao Fei is one of the most innovative artists to have emerged on the international stage, known for work that charts the breakneck urbanisation, environmental changes and social flux of China in the 21st century.
Born in 1978 in Guangzhou, Cao is a world-builder who works across videos, photography, sculpture and immersive installations. Her acclaimed practice mixes social commentary, pop culture, references to surrealism, and documentary and she has appeared no less than six times in Art Review's 'Power 100' list of the world's most influential people in art.
This book, published in conjunction with the first Australian retrospective of the Beijing-based artist, showcases key works from the past 20 years, as well as newly commissioned works that explore China's deep ties to Australia. Together, they encompass a range of compelling themes including urbanisation, digital transformations, 21st-century globalisation, family histories and diaspora.
Designed by award-winning graphic designer Evi-O, the book offers new scholarship on the artist by the exhibition's curators, Ruby Arrowsmith-Todd and Yin Cao, together with essays by the renowned scholar of Chinese contemporary art Hou Hanru and emerging Asian-Australian writers Michael Sun, Jinghua Qian and Pao-chen Tang. An expansive interview with Cao Fei and short entries on key projects features alongside a rich selection of artwork stills, reproduction images of props and paraphernalia, and a playful array of archival material spanning the artist's influences.
About the Author :
Ruby Arrowsmith-Todd is curator of film at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where she has curated major cinema programs and commissioned new moving-image works by local and international artists. Ruby has published widely on the cultural histories of cinema in Australia and is guest curator at Sydney Film Festival, specialising in contemporary artists' moving image.
Yin Cao is curator of Chinese art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Her most recent exhibitions and related publications include Heaven and earth in Chinese art: treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei (AGNSW, 2019),Tang: treasures from the Silk Road capital (AGNSW,2016) and A Silk Road saga: the sarcophagus of Yuhong (AGNSW,2013).In previous roles she co-organised the inaugural exhibitions at the Arthur M Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking University and the Lee Kong Chian Art Museum at the National University of Singapore. Trained as an archaeologist at Peking University, she is a PhD candidate with the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University.
Hou Hanru is an internationally renowned critic, curator, and former artistic director at MAXXI, National Museum of 21st Century Arts, Rome, Italy (2013-22). He was previously director of exhibitions and public programs and chair of exhibition and museum studies at the San Francisco Art Institute (2006-12)and has curated and co-curated over 150 exhibitions across the world, including biennials and triennials in Johannesburg, Venice, Shanghai, Gwangju, Guangzhou, Tirana, Istanbul, Lyon, Auckland and Shenzhen. He has been closely collaborating with and writing on Cao Fei since around 2000, including the solo exhibition CaoFei: Supernova at MAXXI (2020). He is an advisor to numerous international institutions and frequent contributor to conferences, catalogues, periodicals and books on contemporary art, and has been guest editor for international art journals including Flash Art, Yishu, Art Asia Pacific and LEAP.A selection of his writings was published as On the mid-ground in 2002 (Timezone 8, Hong Kong).
Michael Sun is a critic, essayist, and editor from China and Australia. His writing on film, music and literature is regularly published in The Guardian, Esquire, The Monthly, The Saturday Paper
and ABC Arts, among many others. Recently, he hosted The Guardian's online culture podcast Saved for later. He isa winner of the New Critic prize, awarded by Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings.
Pao-chenTang is a lecturer in film studies at the University of Sydney, with a PhD from the University of Chicago. He is a scholar of transnational cinema and environmental humanities. He has written for Screen, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies and Journal of Chinese Cinemas, among others. Current projects include a co-edited volume on medical culture in East Asian media and his first book, devoted to animism in contemporary cinema.
