Cao Fei - Global player - ArtAsiaPacific
by CT
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The following interview with Cao Fei took place in 2006 in New York City and was published in ArtAsiaPacific. I believe her voice brings my essay to life.
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CT: How did you first become involved the global exhibition arena?
CF: Paris-based Chinese curator Hou Hanru saw the first video I finished in school in 1999: he selected it for a show in Madrid. The work addressed peer complaints about the traditional nature of our school in Guangzhou where even today, the institution refuses to teach contemporary art.
CT: Your work seems to mirror the divisions between those artists who experienced Mao's China and a new globally aware youth culture. The idea of old and new plays out by highlighting and contrasting the 21st century architecture of the new cities as a playground or background for youth's rebellious activities. In your video COSPlayers you reference the Japanese sub-culture of costume play where kids dress up in their favorite anime
character and play spirited games against the backdrop of the rising new cities. In contrast, some voyeuristic photographs allow us to see the costumed adolescents at home with their working class families, looking thoroughly depressed.
Hanru remarks that the COSPlayers are very young, with their heads filled with dreams, having spent all their waking hours in the virtual world of video games from a very early age. When they eventually grow up, they
discover they are living a lifestyle frowned upon and rejected by society and family. With no channels open to express their feelings and aspirations they resort to escapism and become alienated and out of touch, they turn
into ever more unbecoming characters.
CF: My country is growing at high speed and the development of the new cities in pace with the global economy is confusing. On many levels, all of us, young and old, lose our way. Costume players juxtapose the fantasy world of video games with the reality of our lives. It is an expression of our alienation from traditional values. This is my generation.
CT: The curator, Pi Li comments that today, the relationship between art and society has now become simply a search for novelty.
CF: Different generations of artists use their age bracket as a topic. The Cultural Revolution — the struggle about the ensuing difficult times; economic hardship, totalitarian misrule, influenced the generation before me. Once they had the opportunity a number of those artists (Huang YongPing, Chen Zhen Hou Hanru) left China to live abroad.
My generation from 1980 on prefers to remain in China because it is such an interesting time and place. We grew up with pop culture, new technologies, electronic entertainment computer games, American Rap, Hong
Kong films etc all are appealing to the common people, not only the artistic avant-garde. The Chinese contemporary art scene is now entering a completely new phase that is both individualized and globalized.
To further address Pi Li's remark, artists always want to make their work different and this generation works not only with new media but also new world problems. I believe some critics find it confusing.
CT: Is there any state support for art in China?
CF: Well, this has always been difficult but it has been the way. My mother and father are and were official artists. My stepfather, too, is a calligrapher, and the government pays each of them. This is not so for my generation, we are not making art for the government. From the very beginning I had a part-time job to support my self and I feel this allows me my freedom.
CT: What does your family say about your work?
CF: They think I do funny things like a child, or as a joke.
CT: Hans Ulrich Obrist said: "Cao Fei is the model of the artist as inventor and explorer who with infinite curiosity acts as a witness of her time."
What was your experience working with the curators Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist at the 2005 Guangzhou Triennial?
CF: Hanru lives in Paris and is Cantonese. Many of his projects take place in Asia and the third world: I understand his writing and thinking. His influence continues to be very important.
I collaborated with Hans Ulrich Obrist twice, once for the Moscow Biennial and then for the Guangzhou Triennial and recently there have been other exhibitions. While most of our connection is and was by e-mail, he
served to further open my mind and eyes to other artists, to expand my knowledge. Unfortunately, I can't work with him enough; he is always so busy. He reminds me that China is growing very quickly and holds the world's
focus, not only because of the economics but also the art that informs the moment.
CT: The Chinese government is concerned with power and money but at the same time, as reflected and reported in the country's social conditions, it is not paying enough attention to the working classes.
CF: Also, the interest of the whole country is on economics – labels, cars and clothes – and not enough on other realities. Clearly we have lost something. For example, in China, hospitals are so costly that many people cannot afford them. I guess it's a tradeoff.
CT: In that your practice is inserted into public spaces, you attempt to engage street folk, actors and friends as they are at the root of your creative sensibility.
CF: My players come from real life. We love the new styles they catch my mind's eye while freeing my imagination.
CT: The Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin says, certain categories of display (speaking of carnival), relate to the intrinsic identification with difference and other and with a built-in affinity for the oppressed and marginal. Subcultures such as British Punk, American Rap and hip-hop and Japanese costume play are circus-like. They evolve from the socially disenfranchised and the others and can be viewed as humanistically related. Your theatrical performances are also a kind of transnational and cultural slippage that is intentional, amusing and circus-like.
CF: Yes, I am not simply making art: my work addresses culture in a bigger way and through it I hope to bring attention to the common people. My project collaborates with costume players, Hip-Hoppers, the guys playing
music, the youth culture and the common people. Through this play, I reach real emotions. Hip-Hop has a lot of power and influence.
CT: Hip Hop — New York City Chinatown [DATE?] is the third installment of a video project, two of which you completed in China and Japan. The trilogy moves smoothly along a geographical range, showing that pop culture is a bridge between disparate locations. Can you tell me about this last experience, making Hip Hop New York for Lombard-Fried Projects?
CF: The first time here, I found New York huge and daunting, and now I love it. Most of the Chinatown immigrants are from Canton province [and many come here looking for a better life]. The Notorious MSG, a hip-hop group from Chinatown who collaborated with me for the installation. They embrace the identity of Chinatown immigrants working menial jobs who find only struggle and disillusion: they are unhappy. As rappers, MSG speaks about those
troubles but also gives voice to hope, humor and empowerment.
It's ironic that in China, cheap laborers come from small villages to find work in big cities – Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou – and they find the same situation as their counterparts in New York.
CT: Is the young immigrant generation in New York aware that there is a similar problem in China, and are the mainlanders in China aware of your work?
CF: No. The people don't go to museums and my work is not on TV. But the labor force likes entertainment — drama and comic films. It's important to be funny for them anyway.
CT: Now, the new economy in China paralleling the burgeoning art market could spur the building of new museums and engage a larger audience We'll see. I understand you are now making a film that will air in a public Chinese venue.
CF: Yes, I'm making a film now, an official project funded by the government: it will be shown at the end of the year. It is about young people lost in the city who, seeking a better life, migrate to Yunnan province near the Tibetan mountains. They live on the road, walking two or three days climbing high mountains and connecting [with peers] on the Internet. My script is comprised of their diaries; each day they write stories on the rocks along their path. They write their feelings about their travel, their disappointments in the city, their hated jobs and the new beautiful landscape they encounter on their journey.
CT: Why did the government give you the funds to make this??
CF: On the surface you can see the people praying and having fun. It is much more compelling than this superficial aspect but the government understands this as a travelogue -- and they want others to trek there as well.