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Cao Fei
简介 | Biography
曹斐，1978 年生于广州，2001年毕业于广州美术学院。现在北京工作和生活。
曹斐是活跃于国际舞台的中国艺术家。她的创作跨越了活动影像、摄影、剧场、写作和第二人生电影等多种媒介，以丰富的媒介手段来表达对当代生存的感受。她的影像作品，往往在记录现实与虚构叙事之间的自由切换，既充满尘世的细节，又具有史诗般的迷人魅力。有感于虚拟生活对生命经验的巨大影响，曹斐在“第二人生”上发展出“人民城寨 (RMB City)”这座城市和这个行走于想象与现实边界的实验项目（2007-2011），并持续将艺术探讨的区域扩展到当代数字化生活系统。对时代发展中的大众文化、技术演变和城市变迁的强烈兴趣，使得她善于将艺术创作的过程和特定的社会空间和社群结合，使艺术项目成为戏剧性地呈现集体梦想的平台，正如“红霞”这个发生在逝去的影院、时间跨度近十年的项目（2015-2024） 所揭示的，曹斐力图在现实的剧变中，为人们创作出一份关于生活和梦想的记忆。
Born in 1978 in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, Cao Fei graduated from Guangzhou Academy of Fine Art in 2001. She lives and works in Beijing.
Cao Fei is one of the most innovative Chinese artists to have emerged on the international scene. She mixes social commentary, popular aesthetics, references to Surrealism, and documentary conventions in her films and installations. Her works reflect on the rapid growth and development of Chinese society today, and explore perception and reality in places as diverse as a Chinese factory and the virtual world of “Second Life”. Applying strategies of sampling, role play, and documentary filmmaking to capture individuals’ longings and the ways in which they imagine themselves—as hip-hop musicians, costumed characters, or digitized alter egos—Cao Fei reveals the discrepancy between reality and dream, and the discontent and disillusionment of China’s younger generation.
Fascinated by the world of “Second Life”, Cao Fei has created and designed her own virtual utopia, “RMB City” (2007–11), where she is both participant and observer through her “Second Life” avatar, China Tracy, who acts as a guide, philosopher, and tourist. Cao Fei’s art practices explore the fluidity of a world in which cultures have mixed and diverged in rapid evolution. Her strong interest in popular culture, technological evolution, and urban transformation enables her to integrate the artistic process with specific social spaces and communities, turning her projects into platforms for dramatizing collective dreams. This is exemplified in HX, a nearly decade-long project (2015-2024) set in a vanished cinema Hongxia, where Cao Fei seeks to create dreams and memories of life and destiny amid the rapid transformations of reality.