For 20 years, the Chinese video-maker has been telling the technological and social dynamics of her country, with patience and poetry.

Born in 1978, Cao Fei (pronounced z&agrave;o f&eacute;i) has&nbsp;always been on the hunt for the human touch.&nbsp;Since her&nbsp;first video, &quot;Imbalance 257&quot;, released in 1999, the artist, originally from Guangzhou and the daughter of a famous sculptor, has often explored&nbsp;the way communities interact and style themselves.&nbsp;In 2004 she created &quot;COSplayers&quot;, an examination of young people who personify and dress like video game characters. In&nbsp;&quot;i.Mirror&quot; (2007) and &quot;RMB City&quot; (2007-2011), she explored&nbsp;the virtual universe of Second Life. &nbsp;The creations&nbsp;document&nbsp;the experiences of the&nbsp;artistic avatar and alter ego of China Tracy as she&nbsp;builds a city of pixels and explores the limits of the physical and digital world.&nbsp;

Her works have&nbsp;been exhibited in the most prestigious artistic institutions of the world, like the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Biennale di Venezia, and Tate Modern in London.&nbsp;&nbsp;Cao Fei has also presented&nbsp;the exhibition &quot;HX&quot; at the Centre Pompidou, a long-term exploration of the district of Hongxia, Beijing&#39;s artistic hub prey to gentrification, accompanied by a science-fiction film, &quot;Nova.&quot; Fei has allowed&nbsp;herself to become immersed in her practice, approaching her subjects with&nbsp;great patience.&nbsp;

In 2006, she launched one of her most important works, &quot;Whose Utopia?&quot;, a&nbsp;poetic immersion in a lightbulb factory in the Pearl River Delta, the most economically dynamic region of China.&nbsp;It shows the workers, who embody their most hidden aspirations&nbsp;in their everyday work&nbsp;environment.&nbsp;Thus, we see a girl dressed as a dancer who dances among the machines and a man who plays the electric guitar.&nbsp;Cao Fei sent more than 500 questionnaires to employees, asking about their interests and&nbsp;what they think about before going out to work.&nbsp;She organized&nbsp;workshops with some participants and asked&nbsp;them to paint their vision of utopia, and illustrated the&nbsp;contradiction&nbsp;between&nbsp;individual aspirations and the alienating environment of the factory, where &quot;the bunk beds of the dormitories are the only private spaces, less than two square meters.&quot;

In 2018, the artist shot &quot;Asia One&quot; about the first fully automated sorting center in the world.&nbsp;&quot;Technology has developed beyond imagination,&quot; she notes.&nbsp;Here, only two humans supervise the plant and the robots are now able to give them &quot;confidence ratings.&quot;&nbsp;Cao Fei distances herself from any link with the citizens&#39; assessment system established in 2018 by the Chinese state.&nbsp;&quot;I wanted to show that robots have their own simple and arbitrary procedures.&nbsp;This poses problems because it is a social system that is based on these black and white mechanisms and on an electronic evaluation.&quot;

After industrial production, the artist became interested in the prison system for &quot;Prison Architect&quot; (2018), filming&nbsp;a former detention center.&nbsp;This is the common thread of her&nbsp;practice, in which she loves &quot;to base the creative part on a margin of reality, to unfold an invented&nbsp;story onto a real structure.&quot;

Military cotton shirt, Givenchy; cotton top, Dries Van Noten; cotton pants, silicone earring and artist's sneakers; watch “Code 11.59 by Audemars Piguet” Automatic Chronograph, in 18-carat pink gold, 41 mm, Audemars Piguet.

Photo: Lin Shu.&nbsp; 
Styling: Yuan Qian.&nbsp; 
Assistant stylist: Jianli Wang.&nbsp; 
Study assistant: Xu Zhengyue.&nbsp; 
Hairstylist and Makeup artist: Guo Fei.

Cao Fei's Virtual Reality

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