Cao Fei

WHOSE UTOPIA
09.01–10.08.2011
Room 2

Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal and Centre CLARK presents the work Whose Utopia by Cao Fei.

Lucidity. Inward Views is the theme proposed by Anne-Marie Ninacs for the 12th presentation of Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, which will be held from September 8 to October 9, 2011. For the occasion, 25 solo exhibitions will be spread throughout Montreal transforming the city into a vast and coherent group show.

Cao Fei is concerned with the fate of individuals facing the radical changes sweeping the contemporary world, and she is particularly sensitive to the impact of China’s accelerated transition toward a market economy. In 2006, she went to a light-bulb factory for a six-month artistic collaboration with the employees, who, due to the extreme rationalization of production, were living under conditions leading to the eradication of their dreams. The video Whose Utopia (2006) is the result of this collaboration, which sought to revive the workers’ contact with their aspirations and their creative power. Although they are physically distant, their reality nevertheless reflects the inner conflict experienced by most individuals subjected to the productivity logic of the industrialized world.

Cao Fei is born in 1978, Guangzhou, China. She lives and works in Beijing.

Cao Fei’s videos, photographs, and digital works associate popular culture with the idea of utopia in order to portray the transitions of contemporary China. She has had a meteoric rise on the international art scene and her work has recently been seen, among other venues, at the Serpentine Gallery in London (2009), the New Museum in New York (2009), and the São Paulo Biennale (2010). Cao received the Chinese Contemporary Art Award in 2006 and was a finalist for the Hugo Boss Prize awarded by the Guggenheim Museum in 2010. She is represented by Vitamin Creative Space in Guangzhou and by Lombard-Freid Projects in New York.

This exhibition is supported in part by a grant from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.

See caofei.com

Cao Fei, Whose Utopia, 2006, video still. Courtesy of the artist and Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou. © Cao Fei