February 4th –June 5th, 2011, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Cao Fei, born 1978, lives and works in Beijing. She is part of the young generation described as New New Human Beings, who embrace popular consumer culture and all things global, diverse, old, new, intellectual, and non-intellectual. Using computers, cell phones and social media, this generation hopes to undermine China’s political system. Cao Fei’s RMB City (2008–2010) is a two-year project that utilizes Second Life, an online virtual community inhabited by avatars—imaginary characters created by their real-life masters. In Second Life, avatars play, socialize, develop businesses, and pursue educational and creative opportunities often related to art, design and architecture. They hope to find idealistic solutions to global problems.

Cao Fei describes RMB City as “an online art community in the virtual world of Second Life.” The city reflects China’s explosive building boom and global economic prowess. RMB City takes its name from renminbi, the official currency of the Republic of China. According to Cao Fei, RMB City was created through “people’s imagination, with no nationalities and no borders. RMB City is ‘our’ city, an artistic and social platform crossing the boundaries between the real and the virtual, between past, present and future, between China and the cosmopolitan contemporary world.” RMB City represents endless possibility.

This video—RMB City Opera—highlights RMB City’s virtual cityscape and includes emblematic sites such as Tiananmen Square and buildings such as the Beijing Olympic Stadium (designed by Herzog and de Meuron), the China Central TV building (designed by Rem Koolhaus), New York’s Guggenheim Museum (which bought virtual space within RMB City), and a giant wheel inspired by artist Marcel Duchamp’s iconic Bicycle Wheel sculpture. During the video, there are times the viewer seems to enter the city, soaring through and amongst its architectural wonders.

In RMB City Opera a man, Nemeth, and a woman, Masala, interact as actors on a stage and as avatars in the virtual world. Inspired by the Eight Model Works, propaganda operas from the Chinese Cultural Revolution, RMB City Opera includes characters in Red Army uniforms. Batman and Batwoman, Superman and Superwoman are also among the cast. Cao Fei prefers popular culture characters and music because they are widely known and will reach the broadest audience.

RMB City Opera is rich in content. It explores the idea of play, romance, identity, utopia/dystopia, communication/isolation, the nature of reality and the global, interconnected world in which we live. In 2009, it premiered in Turin, Italy, as an experimental theatrical play, and its installation at the Nelson-Atkins marks its American debut.

Running time: 45 minutes

This exhibition was supported by the Campbell Calvin Fund and Elizabeth C. Bonner Charitable Trust for exhibitions and the Rheta A. Sosland Fund.