Cao Fei. Supernova
curated by Hou Hanru and Monia Trombetta
texts by Valeria Dellino, Hou Hanru, Wang Hongzhe, Olivia Khoo, Cristiana Perrella, Monia Trombetta
bilingual edition ita/eng
Nero Publishing, 2021
232 pages + 90-page insert
17×24 cm
€ 30
Produced on the occasion of the homonym exhibition at MAXXI, this volume traces the path of Cao Fei’s artistic research from 2007 to the present. Through the narration of her works, it offers a glimpse of the panorama of contemporary China and its strong link with digital technology. The reflections of curators and experts and an unpublished interview with Cao Fei deepen the artist’s intense relationship with her own territory and with the Chinese cultural dimension: between the physical reality of her neighbourhood in Beijing (in particular of the former cinema of Hongxia, which she recovered and transformed into a studio), and the intangible and increasingly frequented reality of the metaverse, the virtual place where she has created some of her works. The texts are accompanied by a rich iconographic apparatus and a detachable insert with a story by Wang Hongzhe illustrated by Zhao Mengyao’s drawings.
