Cao Fei – Testimonies to the Near Future

From May 30 to October 11, 2026, the Kunstmuseum Basel / Gegenwart presents Testimonies to the Near Future, a major exhibition showcasing the work of Cao Fei.

The immersive retrospective explores nearly three decades of artistic creation. Firstly it is a space where reality, fiction, technology, and collective imagination converge. Occupying the entire Gegenwart building, the exhibition unfolds like a city waiting to be explored. Each floor reveals a new world and perspective. Moreover, it reflects Cao Fei’s exploration of the social, economic, and technological transformations shaping our present and future.

Born in Guangzhou in 1978, Cao Fei has established herself as one of the leading figures in contemporary Chinese art. Since the late 1990s, she has developed a multidisciplinary practice. This practice combines video, photography, installation, virtual reality, and digital environments. Her work explores the profound changes brought about by rapid urbanization, globalization, technological advancement, and the emergence of new connected ways of living. Through her creations, she investigates how these transformations influence our relationship with work, identity, the body, memory, and dreams.

Furthermore, drawing inspiration from video games, industrial landscapes, popular culture, and futuristic visions, Cao Fei creates narratives where documentary reality merges with speculative fiction. Her distinctive strength lies in her ability to weave imaginary elements into real-world environments. As a result, she constantly blurs the boundaries between the tangible and the virtual.

Today, she is widely regarded as one of the most significant thinkers exploring the intersections of art, technology, and the future. She offers a particularly relevant perspective on contemporary society and its ongoing evolution.

Cao Fei: Testimonies to the Near Future

Developed in collaboration with Small Productions, Pekin, Testimonies to the Near Future brings together ten large-scale installations and immersive environments. It is accompanied by a selection of works created between the 1990s and 2025.

More than a retrospective, the exhibition functions as a sensory experience. Visitors do not simply observe the works. They move through them, inhabit them, and become active participants within these constantly shifting worlds.

Cao Fei: One Floor, One Universe

Ground Floor: Urban Cultures and Collective Imaginations

Firstly, from the moment visitors enter, they encounter a space reminiscent of a contemporary public square. Skateboarding ramps occupy the gallery, while graffiti covers the walls. Above, textile structures serve as screens for a series of videos from the project Hip Hop (2003).

Indeed, the videos feature people dancing in public spaces to hip-hop music in cities across the globe. Filmed in Fukuoka, Guangzhou, New York, Shanghai, and Sydney, they demonstrate how a culture born in a specific place can be adopted, transformed, and reinterpreted. This process occurs within vastly different urban contexts.

In another section of the floor, visitors encounter Cosplayers (2004). The work follows young cosplay enthusiasts in the outskirts of Guangzhou. Dressed as characters from popular Japanese manga and anime, they wander through abandoned buildings and deteriorating urban landscapes.

Through these images, Cao Fei explores the aspirations of a generation raised alongside the internet. She creates scenes that appear both real and unreal. Consequently, she reveals how virtual worlds inspired by video games and popular media increasingly spill over into physical reality.

First Floor: Industry, Logistics, and China’s Economic Transformation

In contrast, the first floor immerses visitors in the industrial universe that has profoundly shaped contemporary China.

Delivery vehicles, warehouse structures, and rows of bunk beds form an environment inspired by the logistics infrastructures and living conditions associated with industrial labor. Through videos, photographs, and installations, Cao Fei retraces China’s remarkable evolution. Specifically, the country evolved from a low-cost manufacturing center to a global leader in logistics, automation, and artificial intelligence.

This floor also highlights China Tracy, Cao Fei’s first virtual avatar created on Second Life. Functioning as a digital alter ego, she inhabited an early virtual world that anticipated many of today’s metaverse experiences.

Second Floor: Metaverses, Avatars, and Hybrid Futures

Then, in the second level focuses on digital worlds and emerging forms of virtual existence.

Visitors encounter Oz, one of Cao Fei’s latest avatars, created within Yuanbang Mega City, a metaverse platform developed by Meta Media and Baidu. Oz appears as a hybrid creature existing between living organism and machine. In doing so, its appearance dissolves the boundaries between nature and technology, biology and mechanical extension.

The films Duotopia and Oz imagine future societies confronting the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and the increasing digitization of everyday life. Rather than presenting a purely dystopian or utopian vision, Cao Fei examines how human beings learn to navigate an environment. This environment is becoming ever more technologically complex.

Third Floor: Intimacy, Memory, and Imagination

The final floor offers a more personal and introspective perspective.

The installation Isle of Instability (2020) draws directly from the period of isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic. Visitors encounter the artist’s daughter attempting to escape boredom and confinement through imagination.

Seated before a television screen emitting a blank white glow, surrounded by a houseplant and a fan simulating an ocean breeze, she constructs her own world using everyday objects, toys, and even hand sanitizer.

This imaginary island becomes a refuge, illustrating how childhood transforms constraints into spaces of freedom and creativity. The floor also presents archival materials, photographs, interviews, and early works that trace the development of Cao Fei’s artistic practice. Together, these documents provide valuable insight into the consistency of her vision. They also reveal the questions that have shaped her work for more than three decades.

Testimonies to the Near Future

Finally, through Testimonies to the Near Future, Cao Fei does not attempt to predict what lies ahead. Instead, she encourages us to observe the transformations already unfolding around us. Blending popular culture, metaverses, industrialization, artificial intelligence, and intimate narratives, the exhibition offers a sensitive cartography of contemporary life.

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