CAO YU

Cao Yu’s creative language has always been sharp, bizarre, bold and humorous. Cao Yu has never been interested in ‘Feminism’. To the contrary, she prefers more powerful, wise and humorous transformation methods to explore the most piercing motifs of human nature. As she says, ‘How can it hit themark if it’s not fierce and painful?’ In the photographic work Dragon Head (2020, c-print, 220 x 147 cm),the artist transforms her memories of the heavy iron and steel industry of her native northeast China—heavy, crude, rigid, strong—into a photographic image of an androgynous figure with a calm, composedpresence. The model is the artist herself. In the photographic work The Thing In the Chest (2020, bull’sheart, tiger head tattoo, the artist, 160 × 179 cm), that same androgynous figure holds up a giant bull’sheart tattooed with the head of a tiger. Some people tattoo strength onto their chests, some inscribeambitions into their hearts. She yearns for a fierce tiger in her own heart, so that she can press forwardwithout fear.

In the aerial holographic projection Where Have You Been (2020, aerial holographic projection, 120 × 120 cm), an apparition of a sage or a monk appears like a mirage in the air above the exhibition space.He seems to float in mid-air, approaching you with a smile from the distant aura. The illusory figure’sbenevolent smile gradually recedes, and his face takes on a grave look that shifts to disappointment, andthen tears. As you gaze at him, he tersely asks, ‘Where have you been?’ then disappears. Why does thisnoble, elevated figure cry with disappointment at the sight of you? It is as if the viewer has been placed inan unreal world of dreams, and is awakened in the baptism of a cold breeze, to realize where their trueselves are going.

Nothing Can Ensure that We Will Meet Again (Ice Age - 2014, umbilical cord of the artist’s son, crystal resin, mammoth leg bone fossil, 130 × 37 × 30 cm) elucidates the themes of this exhibition in a moremournful tone. The artist preserved the umbilical cord from the birth of her son seven years ago (2014),and has joined its ends to create a closed loop, using transparent materials to embed it into a fossilisedbone (130 cm in length) from the largest land mammal to have ever lived, the Ice Age woolly mammoth.The segments in the loop symbolize an ending, but the loop also symbolises the beginning of a new cycle.She has turned a life departed ten thousand years ago into a witness to two lives in the present, as well asa site of preservation, and an oracle. In this way, meeting and parting become eternal.
For Cao Yu, creation is about living. She says, ‘Life is like sitting on a crooked bench. No matter how you sit, it’s always awkward and uncomfortable. Art is like a weapon given to me by the gods, allowing me to be fearless in art.’ We all seek meaning in our lives. Some people find it, and some people become lost. Where we are lost is where the unconsciousness grows.
The human world has never been our final destination, but in the human world, we have encountered countless meetings and partings. We are merely passing through.