Another "near-future city" has emerged at the Kunstmuseum Basel | Gegenwart in Basel, Switzerland.

There, you will find things not typically seen in a conventional art museum: a skate ramp sprayed with letters and drawings by local graffiti artists, a factory-like space, fragments of a city, a digital world reminiscent of the metaverse, and a giant ball pit. Videos, virtual reality, and installations overlap, inviting visitors to walk through the works rather than merely view them.

This city was created by Chinese contemporary artist Cao Fei. Born in Guangzhou in 1978, she has depicted the rapid changes in China and the dreams and loneliness of its people through video, photography, VR, digital media, and installations. The exhibition "Cao Fei. Testimonies to the Near Future," currently held in Basel, is a large-scale retrospective tracing her nearly 30-year career. The exhibition runs from May 30 to October 11, 2026, at the contemporary art section of the Kunstmuseum Basel, housed in a former paper factory. For this exhibition, all four floors have been transformed into Cao Fei's world.

What makes this exhibition intriguing is that it is not merely a retrospective. Instead of simply displaying past masterpieces, the entire exhibition is structured like a city. Streets, factories, cinemas, virtual spaces, and playgrounds blend reality and fantasy, labor and leisure, body and avatar. Visitors do not follow a chronological order of past works but rather enter the "modern society itself" that Cao Fei has long observed.

Guangzhou, where Cao Fei grew up, is a massive city in southern China, at the heart of a region often called the "world's factory." Her generation has experienced China's reform and opening-up, industrialization, urbanization, the spread of the internet, the smartphone society, and the transition to the AI era as nearly simultaneous events. Thus, the future depicted in Cao Fei's works is not distant fantasy but a future already embedded in our lives.

A representative work symbolizing this is "Whose Utopia?" from 2006. The setting is a real light bulb factory, where workers on the assembly line dance ballet, perform hip-hop moves, and play guitar during breaks. The factory is a space of efficiency and discipline, where human bodies are integrated into the production line, and time is meticulously managed. Yet, within it, the desire for personal dreams and expression persists.

Cao Fei does not portray workers merely as symbols of social issues. She depicts them as "dreamers." Someone dances. Someone holds an instrument. Someone momentarily steps outside their assigned role. It is not a grand revolution, but these small gestures signify humanity.

In "RMB City," created between 2007 and 2011, Cao Fei built an imaginary city on the virtual platform "Second Life." Her avatar, "China Tracy," interacted with users, participating in talk shows, conducting feng shui sessions, and experiencing romance. In retrospect, this work seems to have anticipated the metaverse, virtual identity, and digital self-expression.

At the time, virtual worlds were still experimental playgrounds for a select few. However, today, we routinely perform multiple selves through social media, games, online meetings, AI chats, avatars, and filters. Faces, voices, words, images, and even memories are edited digitally. The virtual city Cao Fei created nearly 20 years ago is no longer a special future but an extension of our lives.

The Basel exhibition also features Cao Fei's new avatar, "Oz." This glossy humanoid-like entity traverses digital, virtual, and gaming worlds. If China Tracy was an inhabitant of the early metaverse, Oz can be said to be a being born in the era of AI, game engines, and expanded digital bodies. Here, the boundaries between human and machine, body and data, character and self are increasingly blurred.

This ambiguity is at the core of Cao Fei's work. She does not simply praise technology, nor does she depict machines and AI as objects of fear. Instead, she examines how technology intertwines with human desires, labor, loneliness, memory, and play. What do humans feel in automated warehouses? Are relationships born in virtual spaces real? Where does human creativity remain in the AI era? Cao Fei's works pose these questions to the audience.

The skate ramp placed at the entrance of the Basel exhibition is symbolic in this sense. Skateboarding is a culture born in urban spaces, a form of body expression that uses gaps in controlled public spaces. By bringing a skate ramp into the institutional space of a museum, Cao Fei opens questions like "Whose city is it?" and "How freely can bodies move?" For her work, the city is not just a backdrop but a stage where people search for their place, perform, and dream amid societal changes.

On social media, this exhibition has attracted attention for its visual impact. The immersive installation, particularly the giant ball pit, is easily spread through photos and videos. Public posts describe it as "one of the best exhibitions of the season" and "a must-see," with visitor comments like "just fun" and "I haven't jumped into a ball pit in ages." Museum and art media posts introduce the giant ball pit as a space that "blurs the boundaries of play, memory, and imagination."

However, the enjoyment conveyed on social media alone cannot fully capture the essence of this exhibition. Indeed, Cao Fei's installations have the allure of an amusement park: colorful, immersive, and photo-worthy. Yet, behind that enjoyment lies the anxiety of modern society. Are we playing of our own volition, or are we being guided by screens and platforms? Are we capturing memories or experiencing them to post on social media?

Cao Fei's works do not present these questions as direct sermons. They first entertain the audience and then subtly introduce a sense of discomfort within that enjoyment. The ball pit resembles a children's playground yet simultaneously appears as a digital abyss or virtual space. The avatars and characters on large screens are captivating, but the moment the audience overlays their own bodies, they become aware of the distance between their "real self" and "screen self."

This sensation is becoming increasingly important for us in the AI era. AI writes text, creates images, reproduces voices, and engages in conversation. Parts of human work and creativity are already being supplemented and replaced by machines. Convenience is increasing, but at the same time, we are being questioned about how unique our experiences, words, and bodies truly are.

This point is precisely what The New York Times article emphasizes. Cao Fei is introduced as an artist who contemplates technology, humanity, and how to maintain "human life" in the AI era. Her works do not merely predict future technologies; they depict how humans change when technology permeates life.

Cao Fei's project "Dash," simultaneously held at the Fondazione Prada in Milan, is also connected to this awareness. "Dash" is a multimedia work addressing the impact of technology on agriculture in China and Southeast Asia. Technological changes extend not only to factories, cities, and the metaverse but also to rural areas, land, faith, and tradition. Cao Fei's interest is not solely directed at future visions of the digital world; rather, she observes how technology reshapes the oldest human activities, such as labor and relationships with the land.

In that sense, Cao Fei is both a "futurist" and an artist of "life." Her works feature massive systems: factories, logistics, cities, platforms, virtual worlds, and AI. However, at the center is always the human: the worker, the youth, someone behind the avatar, the dancing body, the audience watching the screen. Technology may seem like the protagonist, but it is actually a mirror reflecting human emotions.

The reason Cao Fei's works have been internationally acclaimed lies in this. While she depicts China's rapid changes, her themes are not limited to China. Globalization, consumption, logistics, automation, digital identity, AI, and the technologization of agriculture are issues progressing worldwide. Therefore, seeing Cao Fei's works at the Basel museum is not a distant country's story but a mirror reflecting one's own life.

The exhibition title "Testimonies to the Near Future" is also suggestive. "Testimonies to the Near Future" is a curious phrase. Testimonies usually recount past events, but here, the testimony is of the future. In other words, for Cao Fei, the future is not something yet to come but something already present within the current moment.

Workers dancing in factories. Avatars falling in love in virtual cities. Visitors sinking into a giant ball pit. Technology infiltrating rural areas. Art experiences spreading on social media. These are not separate landscapes but fragments of the world modern people already inhabit.

Preserving humanity in the AI era may not mean escaping technology. What Cao Fei's works suggest is quite the opposite. In a world surrounded by technology, how do we use our bodies? What dreams do we dream? What relationships do we form? Where do we create space? It is there that human life remains.

The city created by Cao Fei at the Basel museum is both a device for showing the future and a mirror for re-examining the present. On social media, it spreads as a "fun exhibition," and in art media, it is introduced as a "must-see exhibition." However, beneath its bright surface lies a deeper question.

What do we lose in an optimized world, and what can we not afford to let go of?

Cao Fei's answer is not a clear slogan. Yet, within her works, humans are still dancing. Meeting someone in a virtual city, dreaming in a factory, searching for their image in front of a screen. Even as AI evolves, cities change, and labor is reorganized, those small gestures do not disappear.

Therefore, this exhibition is not about fearing the future. Nor is it about naively celebrating it. It is a place for us, already living in the future, to reconsider what "human life" truly means.

Source URL

NYT: Exhibition theme, Cao Fei's career, exhibition overview, representative works "Whose Utopia?" "RMB City," new avatar "Oz," and the issue of humanity in the AI era
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/arts/design/cao-fei-kunstmuseum-basel.html

Kunstmuseum Basel Official: Exhibition name, dates, venue, curator, exhibition overview, confirmation of urban installation structure
https://kunstmuseumbasel.ch/en/exhibitions/2026/cao-fei

Kunstmuseum Basel Official Event Page: Confirmation that the exhibition is structured as an urban construct, dealing with labor, technology, memory, and aspiration
https://kunstmuseumbasel.ch/en/events/event-highlights/artist-talk-cao-fei

The Art Newspaper: Cao Fei interview, her perspective on works becoming reality later, confirmation of relationship with technological capitalism
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/06/17/cao-fei-the-scenarios-in-many-of-my-works-have-come-true-later

Fondazione Prada Official: Overview of "Dash," the value of labor in the AI era, technology and agriculture, and the theme of coexistence between humans, nature, and technology
https://www.fondazioneprada.org/project/cao-fei-dash/?lang=en

Ocula: Evaluation that Cao Fei's works integrate documentary and surreal/speculative elements, confirmation of main themes
https://ocula.com/institutions/kunstmuseum-basel/exhibitions/cao-fei-testimonies-to-the-near-future/

Instagram Post: Confirmation of social media reaction describing the exhibition as "one of the best exhibitions of the season"
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DY4szrlNMI7/

Instagram Post: Confirmation of social media introduction and reaction to the immersive space including a giant ball pit
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZkyYcHghwF/

Threads Post: Confirmation of visitor reactions on social media such as "fun" and "Pure Fun"
https://www.threads.com/%40rengelstoeckli/post/DZFpeGyjQnL/what-a-blast-pur-fun-cao-fei-china-artist-testimonies-to-the-near-future/