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Email PageHip Hop
March 10, 2006- April 8, 2006
Reception: March 10, 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Cao Fei
Lombard-Freid Projects
531 W 26th StLombard-Freid Projects is pleased to present Hip-Hop, Chinese artist Cao Fei’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. According to Hans-Ulrich Obrist, “Cao Fei is a key member of a vibrant new generation of Chinese artists emerging in the early twenty-first century.”
For the opening night Cao Fei invited The Notorious MSG, a local Chinatown hip hop group, to perform in the gallery on a kitchen stage that she designed for this event.
Hip-Hop is a multi-media installation that includes three videos shot in Guangzhou (China), Fukuoka (Japan) and Chinatown, New York. Cao Fei's videos are incorporated into three diverse settings that reflect on each locality.
Hip-Hop Guangzhou is projected on a bed sheet hanging on a laundry line amidst towels and underwear; Hip-Hop Chinatown appears on a fallen over Chinese restaurant banquet table surrounded by Chinese steam baskets and kitchen utensils spread out in disarray; Hip-Hop Fukuoka is projected on a Japanese hanging doorway complete with oriental kite fish and printed curtains.
Cao Fei's videos feature stereotypical characters from each given community: the clerk, the police officer, the prostitute, the restaurant chef, the beggar, the construction worker, the young and old generations of the common people.
In her tongue-in-cheek approach Cao Fei satirizes the norms of social behavior, creating scenarios of hilarious contradictions. They are humorous yet uncannily disturbing. Common people are asked to mimic dance steps in front of the camera, following the rhythm of the upbeat soundtrack. If Hip-Hop is a political language Cao Fei’s videos are a public speech. She leaves it up to the viewer to enjoy the complexity of this form of entertainment.
In his book The New H.N.I.C.: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop, Todd Boyd writes: “Hip hop is inherently political, the language is political. It uses language as a weapon -- not a weapon to violate or to offend, but a weapon that pushes the envelope, that provokes people, makes people think.”
Cao Fei excels at bringing the margins into mainstream and vice-versa: "The Hip-Hop project is about giving a street-created form the most relevant interpretation through the movements of common people, to let it go back to the streets, to people, to the inquiry and questioning of reality. Pop culture is not my goal, it is rather a bridge. It can reach many questions outside itself. It lets outsiders get inside while allowing the insiders to know the outside. It smoothes the way between the superficial look and truth of an issue.” (Cao Fei)
The exhibition continues in the second gallery space where a double-screen video projection is flanked by two life size mannequins dressed in Cao Fei’s designed costumes. The projection is a video version of PRD Anti-Heroes Project, an ambitious theatrical production with a cast of 30 non-professional actors, that was presented last November as part of the Guangzhou Triennial.
In 2006 Cao Fei is featured in her first solo museum exhibition at Museum het Domein, Sittard, Netherlands. Her work is also included in the upcoming 15th Sydney Biennale; Joy at Casino Luxembourg; What Are You Doing Here?, Siemens Art Project 2006: Fu Shan Osram Factory, Guangzhou; The Thirteen Chinese Video Now, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Guangzhou – Cantonese Artists in the Sigg Collection, Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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Lombard-Freid Projects was last updated: 2008-10-11
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