Cao Fei
Nova 15a
C-print
36.02 x 46.88cm
Edition of 60 + 15 APs
Signed and numbered by the artist
On the occasion of her solo exhibition Blueprints, at the Serpentine Galleries, Chinese artist Cao Fei has produced two new limited edition artworks.
For her first major institutional solo exhibition in the UK, Cao Fei brings together new and existing works in a site-specific installation throughout the Serpentine Gallery. At its centre is a feature-length ‘retro-Sci-Fi’ movie, Nova. The work marks the culmination of Cao Fei's extensive research in Beijing over the last five years, examining the social history and urban transformation of the city’s Jiuxianqiao (‘Hong Xia’) district, where she lives and works.
The two limited editions Nova 15a and Nova 18a are two film stills from Cao Fei's new video work Nova, a ‘retro-Sci-Fi’, produced as part of the ‘HX’ research project. The film tells the story of a computer scientist working on a secret international project that attempts to turn humans into digital mediums. A failed attempt to use his son as a test case results in the young man becoming lost in cyberspace, a spectre haunting the past, present and future worlds that continuously interact and overlap throughout the film. By mining the history of her immediate context, Cao Fei takes us on a ‘retro-futurist’ journey that goes beyond chronological time and hovers between reality and fantasy.
