Cao Fei: RMB City Opera

Cao Fei is an internationally renowned Chinese contemporary artist currently living and working in Beijing. She mixes social commentary, popular aesthetics, references to surrealism, and documentary conventions in her films and installations. Her works reflect on the rapid and developmental changes that are occurring in Chinese society today.

Cao Fei (SL avatar: China Tracy), RMB City Opera, 2009. Theatre, 45 min 54 sec. Image courtesy of the artist, Vitamin Creative Space and Sprüth Magers

Cao Fei’s RMB City Opera (2009) merges virtual architecture, socialist fantasy, and operatic form. Set in her online metropolis, RMB City, it offers a prescient meditation on utopia, longing, and reality-production in the age of avatars, the undead, and cryptoterrestrials.

Cao Fei (SL avatar: China Tracy), RMB City Opera, 2009. Theatre, 45 min 54 sec. Image courtesy of the artist, Vitamin Creative Space and Sprüth Magers

Cao Fei (SL avatar: China Tracy), RMB City Opera, 2009. Theatre, 45 min 54 sec. Image courtesy of the artist, Vitamin Creative Space and Sprüth Magers

Cao Fei (SL avatar: China Tracy), RMB City Opera, 2009. Theatre, 45 min 54 sec. Image courtesy of the artist, Vitamin Creative Space and Sprüth Magers