From distant fields to nearby meadows: Cao Fei and Long Pan use art to give voice to nonhuman life
Archipelago of The Future 11/2023
Two female artists join today’s program: Cao Fei and Long Pan. Each spent time working in South America this year — Cao Fei held the exhibition “The Future Is Not a Dream” at the São Paulo State Museum, while Long Pan undertook an artist residency in Colombia. I hope to use their experiences to assemble a small puzzle of contemporary South American art.
How do they perceive the current artistic and cultural conditions in South America? What affinities of rawness or “wildness” connect present‑day South America with southern China twenty years ago? Whether working in distant fields or rooted close to home, how do they find entry points for artistic practice? Cao Fei has long invested in work emerging from an abandoned socialist cinema (Red Dust/Red Glow), while Long Pan is immersed in the world of fungi — how do they, through art, communicate for these nonhuman lives and give them voice? At a time when the contemporary art field is not at its peak, and Chinese contemporary art appears less frequently in international biennials and museum shows, how can artists rediscover new spaces for development? How do two artists from different generations understand and hold visions of the future?