Cao Fei:Evokes Possibilities for Social Transformation

　　Cao Fei is a key member of the vibrant new generation of Chinese artists emerging in the early twenty-first century, a time marked by widespread optimism similar to that which existed in the US in the 1950s and '60s.As curator Hou Hanru has remarked, most of them came of age in a world of electronic advertising and imported entertainment ranging from Taiwanese television to American rap.

　　Born in 1978 in Guangzhou, Cao Fei has developed an expansive oeuvre of theatrical performance, photography, writing, sound pieces, short film, and even a feature-length production Indeed, the multiplictity of her practice recalls that of the young Robert Rauschenberg-a model of the artist as both an inventorand explorer who with infinite curiosity acts an a witness of his on her time. But a more apt comparison might be with Miranda July, who emerged simultaneously in Portland, Oregon. Like her, Cao Fei began writing plays in her teens, spurring what would become a complex, "postmedium" oscillation between different specialties.

　　Both woman espouse a DIY ethic and defy easy categorization, in contrast with the artists of the late 1980s and early "90s who tended to be identified with specific artistic milieus. What is particularly fasci- nating about their two practices is the tight relationship between spoken word, fixed scene, and moving image, recalling Jacques Ranciere's desire to "criticize the vision of artistic modernity, which would say that everybody is in their own place with their own medium and their language."

　　Cao Fei uses Guangzhou as a nexus, or device, for organizing her interdisciplinary activities: With its dynamic structural changer, the city has acted as both a trigger and a backdrop for her work.In2005,for example, she developed a new theater project for the second Guangzhou Triennale, a work she described as "a fluid drama" chronicling the ever= accelerating life on the Pearl River Delta. Her earlier video Oasis shows a man smiling at strangers amid the totally indifferent urban environment, while the more recent Hip Hop,2003,capture construction workers and a policeman moving strangely to a steady rhythm (their awkwardness evoking the early days of MTV).