Game Art: Cao Fei's "RMB City" (2008-2011)

an art community in the 3D virtual world of Second Life and was created by Cao Fei (b. 1978, Guangzhou) as a public platform for creativity. Commenting on China’s urban explosion, the architecture of RMB City mixes ancient and modern Chinese icons from the panda to the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics.

China's current obsession with land development in all its intensity will be extended to Second Life. A rough hybrid of communism, socialism and capitalism, RMB City will be realized in a globalized digital sphere combining overabundant symbols of Chinese reality with  cursory imaginings of the country's future. In RMB City, we will be able to cruise the digital ocean, witnessing a Ferris wheel rotating on top of the Monument to the People's Heroes; looking down from the sky on the water of the Three Gorges reservoir gushing out of the Tian'anmen rostrum; passing the giant new totem symbolizing the Oriental Pearl TV Tower of Shanghai; hopping over the Feilai Temple marooned in a raging torrent; walking across a vast, desolate state-owned factory area in Northeast China; and finally hovering over the Grand National Theatre in Beijing

RMB CITY (2008-2011) has been exhibited in Deutsche Guggenheim (2010), Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2009), Serpentine Gallery, London (2008), Yokohama Triennale (2008). RMB CITY- A Second Life City Planning has been exhibited in Istanbul Biennale (2007); Whose Utopia, TATE Liverpool (2007),

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Submitted by Matteo Bittanti