RMB City
In collaboration with Vitamin Creative Space China and the Institute of Modern Art Brisbane, KickArts presents two recent video works from contemporary video artist Cao Fei. Cao Fei's work responds to China's rapid urbanisation, its giddying pace of social change and economic development. Since 2007 Cao Fei has been working online in Second Life under the guise of her avatar China Tracy.
She has built 'RMB City' on the Second Life Creative Commons island of Kula. Candy-striped smoke stacks suggest continuous industrial production; missiles make unremitting pre-emptive strikes; ships move goods swiftly in and out of port; a giant shopping cart, filled with skyscrapers and religious monuments floats in the harbour; and Tiananmen Square has been converted into a swimming pool. Named after Chinese money, 'RMB City' is a perverse view of Beijing – a collusion of communism, socialism and capitalism.
Like Beijing itself, it is constantly under construction. In her second work, the documentary 'I.Mirror', Cao Fei provides an introduction to the beauty and excess of Second Life, as well as a depicting romance.
- Tues 13th July - Sat 7th Aug
- KickArts Contemporary Arts, Gallery Two
- 96 Abbott St Cairns
- Tues - Sat 10.00am-5.00pm
