Cao Fei

My Future Is Not A Dream, 2006

Cao Fei’s multimedia artwork emerges from close observation, and a critical, questioning attitude to her immediate surroundings. She begins with the everyday and mundane, the personal, the supposedly intimate. Her artworks describe the “politics of intimacy” for Generation Y—a generation which is exposed to the consequences of globalization, and whose identity has been deeply shaped by these. In the eight-part photograph series titled My Future Is Not A Dream, Cao Fei addresses the experiential reality of industrial production. At the invitation of the Siemens Arts Program, the artist spent a number of months at a Foshan-based factory, used by the OSRAM company to produce light bulbs for the global market. The photographs show workers dancing to music of their choice, moving through the factory in their costume, posing as music bands, or standing still at their working station whilst the production process continues around them.