Cao Fei blends the real and virtual, exploring China’s urbanisation and technological revolution through art
This spring, the Art Gallery of New South Wales will showcase the must-see exhibition by visionary artist Cao Fei, My City is Yours, kicking off on November 30.
This marks the first major retrospective of the Guangzhou-born artist in Australia, who’s been redefining contemporary art for over two decades.
Recognized as one of the art world’s most influential figures in 2023, Cao’s work brilliantly captures the frenetic energy of China’s rapid urbanisation and digital transformation through mesmerising films, photography, and interactive installations.
In this interview, we chat with Ruby Arrowsmith-Todd, co-curator of the exhibition, about the creative process behind this immersive showcase, the captivating themes in Cao Fei’s art, and what visitors can expect as they step into a neon-lit cityscape that challenges perceptions and ignites the imagination.
Join us as we dive the visionary world of Cao Fei with Ruby Arrow-Smith Todd.
HAPPY: What are you up to today?
RUBY: The exhibition opens this month, so we’re in the final stages of preparation.
A snapshot of today’s tasks: finalising the placement of neons, ordering bespoke stamps which visitors can use on an exhibition map, and reviewing some of the merch which we’ve created for the show.
HAPPY: Tell us a little about where you live, what do you love about it?
RUBY: I live on Gadigal and Wangal lands nearby Goolay’yari (the Cooks River). I’m lucky to live nearby artist-run art spaces like Sydenham International and SYRUP.
HAPPY: You’ve been working closely with Cao Fei—what’s it been like getting inside the mind of such a visionary artist?
RUBY: It’s been a huge pleasure. Cao Fei is one of the most acclaimed contemporary artists working today and has been a pioneer of new media for over two decades.
My co-curator Yin Cao and I visited Cao Fei in Beijing last year and had the privilege of getting to know her work intimately.
We ate together, visited some of her favourite neighbourhoods and met her studio chicken, Xiaohong.
HAPPY: Cao Fei loves blending virtual worlds with reality—how do you think that’s going to shape the vibe of her exhibition?
RUBY: Cao Fei describes the exhibition experience as a wormhole.
Like passing through a portal to another dimension, you’ll enter her cityscape via a replica 1960s Beijing cinema and exit through her homage to a beloved Sydney yum cha restaurant.
After all, sci-fi dreams of time-travel and glitches in the space-time continuum resonate with the upheavals of 21st-century networked China.
As visitors will experience, Cao Fei’s is a city where space and time glitches and surreal scenes of dance and pop music erupt on the streets.
HAPPY: Without giving too much away, can you tease any cool surprises or standout moments visitors can expect from Cao Fei’s work?
RUBY: Visitors will encounter Cao Fei’s world as a neon-lit cityscape specially designed by the artist and the Hong Kong architects, Beau.
Don’t expect a typical white-box experience. In the words of the artist, ‘I don’t want to do a European-style exhibition – low sound, white walls – but a show that’s boisterous like the mall or the market.
That’s what China’s like.’
HAPPY: Her art is packed with technology and multimedia—how do you juggle all the moving parts when curating something so complex?
RUBY: Cao Fei is interested in the raucous, unruly energies of metropolises, and this show transplants the hubbub of the city into the museum.
Visitors will move through a series of zones, with videos, photographs and installations spanning Y2K to today.
The exhibition space has been developed with the Art Gallery’s brilliant team of designers, AV experts and lighting specialists.
HAPPY: What’s been the most rewarding part of curating an artist as forward-thinking as Cao Fei?
RUBY: Cao Fei has always been an early adopter of new media.
Visitors will encounter a range of key works spanning Y2K to today.
From early portraits of cosplayers and street dancers shot on DV-cam to groundbreaking net art, videogames, VR and immersive installations.
Curating this show has often felt like undertaking an archaeological survey of the recent past.
Since she began making art in the early 2000s, Cao has captured how once-new technologies soon become digital ruins.
HAPPY: When you’re curating an exhibition like this one at AGNSW, how do you make sure you’re staying true to the artist’s vision while also creating a killer gallery experience?
RUBY: Exhibition-making is often a complex, unwieldy process.
One of the jobs of a curator is to serve as an intermediary between the desires of an artist and the realities of institutional deadlines.
While we couldn’t make certain things happen, I’m proud of what we’ve collectively been able to achieve.
It’s a very different kind of show for the Art Gallery. The exhibition space will be transformed into Cao Fei’s city.
HAPPY: Do you ever feel like you’re curating for a wide range of people—how do you keep exhibitions accessible but still thought-provoking?
RUBY: One of the things I love about Cao Fei’s work is how she explores historical transformations—China’s rapid urbanisation and technological innovation—with a lightness of touch.
Her work is powerful and emotive. It helps you feel how epochal changes affect everyday people on the street, in the factory, around the dinner table.
HAPPY: Was there a specific moment while working on this exhibition where you really connected with Cao Fei’s art?
RUBY: I love the glitchy, warped artworks which Cao Fei created on Second Life, the once-popular, still-functional online platform where users interact in communal environments.
Between 2007 and 2012, Cao – and a team of coders across Beijing and the Philippines – constructed a digital city replete with a running economy, a manifesto and a mayor.
Presiding over the city was Cao’s avatar China Tracey, a cyber-mother, cyber-lover, cyber-boss who oversaw various parties, feng shui sessions, and auctions of digital real estate to real-life buyers.
I admire how, as an artist, Cao Fei has always had skin in the game. She’s a fan, an avatar, a participant observer.
HAPPY: How do you see galleries like yours helping people engage with cutting-edge contemporary artists like Cao Fei?
RUBY: The Art Gallery’s summer blockbuster slots are usually reserved for Euro-American artists whose legacies have been long canonised.
While it’s great to showcase well-known artists who might be difficult for Australian audiences to see otherwise, it’s also important to stage big shows dedicated to living artists who are working with the media of our times.
The exhibition asks timely questions: How do digital avatars transform our sense of identity?
What’s the future of work and love in an era of surveillance and automation?
HAPPY: If you could sum up the feeling or message you want people to walk away with after seeing Cao Fei’s work, what would it be?
RUBY: This line from Cao Fei has stuck with me: ‘Can we meet in the past and greet each other in the future?’
HAPPY: What makes you happy?
RUBY: For over a year now, I’ve been working closely with Soul of Chinatown, a local advocacy group seeking to revitalise Sydney’s Chinatown in Haymarket.
Along with Kevin Cheng and Eddie Ma, Soul is a labour of love for three generations of one family who have been associated with the area since the 1940s.
I’ve loved getting to know Peter Wong (unofficial King of Chinatown), his son Hayden, and his 90-year-old father, George Wing Kee, who remembers when Dixon St was a thriving market area.
We worked closely with Soul of Chinatown to develop a new commission which will premiere at the exhibition.
It’s a music video featuring local artists, aunties, shopkeepers and students dancing to hip hop on the streets of Chinatown.
Head to AGNSW for tickets to Cao Fei: My City is Yours.
