Made in Mirrors

Life Project - Cao Fei and DSM

A Proposal from Cao Fei for MIM program Made of No Titles curated by Vitamin Creative Space

The proposal Life Project is raised from Cao Fei’s interests in DSM, which is “active worldwide in nutritional and pharma ingredients, performance materials and industrial chemicals. The company develops, produces and sells innovative products and services that help improve the quality of life. “ (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

Cao Fei is interested to see how the life science and biological technology influence the human being’s life and how we could explore the changes from other perspective which will bring the new understanding of the meaning of life. It seems the whole system of DSM provides the perfect circumstances for the artistic research, which will take place not only in Dutch, but also in China, where the chain company of DSM is located. The artist would like to get in touch with all the essential elements surrounding DSM, from the products, label system to the interior design and the people who are working there. The experience, the feeling from the process will plant the seeds for the future art creation.

Cao Fei has developed diverse media formats to express herself, There are always organic components appearing from Cao Fei's multi-layer image world, which reflects Cao Fei's strong interests in revealing the fantastic, absurd forces that exist in the process of urbanization, and the relationship between individuals and society. This creative dynamic is destined to upset certain categorizations of image styles.
“Utopia Factory” is project developed from the encountering between the artist and the OSRAM factory, a subsidiary of Siemens, in Foshan, Guangdong. She was sensitive to the value and position that man had within the huge production system, then she came up with the idea of realizing an artistic project based on exchange and communication with the factory’s employees occupying different positions and duties by means of questionnaires, collected their dreams, and presented them through visual ways such as experimental theater and video, thereby allowing people to see how art can turn a production system that exists in reality into a “theater.”

Cao fei’s Father is presented at the 38th edition of Art Basel. It is the world’s leading art show and annual meeting place of the international art world. Her work is presented by Vitamin Creative Space from Guangzhou in Art Unlimited, 70 unconventional works on show.

Her recent project “China Tracy” is being presented in China Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2007, the oldest and most famous Biennale in the world. The project is based on Cao Fei’s experience in online world “Second Life”, to explore the interaction between the real and virtual worlds, nevertheless, again, it’s about life.

RMB City Planning from rmbcity on Vimeo.

www.rmbcity.com

Director: China Tracy (RL: Cao Fei)
3D Engineer: Rivers Singh
3D Production: arcXchange
Music: ME:MO

Special Thanks:

Hou Hanru
Hamlet Au
Robin Linden
Lombard-Freid Projects, New York
Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou
People's Architecture, New York & Beijing
Creative Commons, San Francisco

Cao Fei’s first investigation to Sittard and Delft will be from 20th to 23rd June 2007, the investigation in China is planned to be in the end of July, and the whole research process will be from June 2007 to Jan 2008.