‘Cao Fei is running late,’ says the interpreter for my interview. ‘She can’t get Zoom to work on her new computer.’ The interpreter – he’s calling in from Melbourne, and I, from Singapore – tries to set up FaceTime, but that doesn’t work either. And just as we’ve managed to log on to Google Meet, Cao comes online on Zoom from Beijing. She’s using her old laptop. ‘I’m so sorry.’
The irony of the moment looms large. Since she burst into an unsuspecting art world in 1999 with Imbalance 257 – a grainy, voyeuristic video of disaffected Chinese youth she’d shot for her third-year project at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts – Cao has become renowned for her adept fusion of technology and visual art to create surrealistic, dystopian worlds where an entire online city floats over water (RMB City: A Second Life City Planning, 2007), a man is lost in hyperspace (Nova, 2019), and a robot vacuum cleaner wanders aimlessly through rubble (Rumba II: Nomad, 2015).
‘Cao’s practice has always hovered between the real and virtual worlds,’ says Stephanie Fong, the founder of Fost Gallery in Singapore, who has been following Cao’s work since Cosplayers, 2004. ‘She was making multimedia works even before the current generation of art consumers was born.’
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Denne historien er fra November 2021-utgaven av Wallpaper.
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Guiding Light - Designer Joe Armitage follows his grandfather's footsteps in India, reissuing his elegant midcentury lamp and creating a new chandelier for Nilufar Gallery
For some of us, family inheritances I tend to be burdensome, taking up space, emotionally and physically, in both our minds and attics. For the London-based designer and architect Joe Armitage, however, a family heirloom has taken him somewhere lighter and brighter, across generations and continents, and into the path of Le Corbusier. This is the story of a lamp designed by Edward Armitage in India 72 years ago, which has today been expanded into a collection of lights by his grandson Joe.
POLE POSITION
A compact Melbourne house with a small footprint is big on efficiency and experimentation
URBAN OASIS
At an art-filled Mexico City residence, New York designer Giancarlo Valle has put his own spin on the country's traditional craft heritage
WARM FRONT
Designer Clive Lonstein elevates his carefully curated Manhattan home with rich textures and fabrics
BALCONY SCENE
A Brazilian island hotel offers a unique approach to the alfresco experience
ENSEMBLE CAST
How architect Anne Holtrop is leaving his mark on the Middle East
Survival mode
A new show looks at preparing for a post-apocalyptic landscape (and other catastrophes)
FLASK FORCE
A limited-edition perfume collaboration between two Spanish craft masters says it with flowers
BLOOM SERVICE
A flower-shaped brutalist beauty in Geneva gets a refresh
SECOND NATURE
A remodelled museum in Lisbon, by Kengo Kuma & Associates, meshes Japanese and Portuguese influences to create a space that sits in harmony with its surroundings