Cao Fei's Visionary Art Explores Technology's Impact on Society
The Chinese new-media pioneer, recognized on the 2026 TIME100 Art List, examines the intersection of technological progress and human experience.
Artist Cao Fei, a prominent figure in new-media art, has consistently anticipated the societal shifts brought about by technological advancements. Her work, which spans nearly three decades, has explored themes from factory life to the metaverse, often prefiguring the complex paradoxes associated with progress from the industrial revolution to the current AI era.
In 2018, Fei created a video set within a Chinese logistics center that eerily foreshadowed the global proliferation of Amazon-like warehouses. The film depicted a character with a barcode on her wrist, a symbolic representation of the intense surveillance of worker productivity that has become a feature of such environments.
Her extensive catalog, comprising films, virtual reality experiences, and installations, is currently being showcased in a survey exhibition titled “Testimonies to the Near Future,” running through October at the Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland. This exhibition highlights her long-standing engagement with the evolving relationship between humanity and technology.
More recently, Fei’s latest body of work, “Dash,” on display at Milan’s Fondazione Prada until September, delves into the impact of smart technology on agriculture in China and Southeast Asia. After three years of intensive fieldwork and research, the exhibition presents a surreal environment designed to visualize how algorithmic systems are reshaping the human connection to the land, examining both the gains in efficiency and the displacement of traditional agricultural knowledge.