Poetic Dystopia
Cao Fei has won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2021 (image: The Photographers’ Gallery).
“She captures the particular isolation and alienation experienced in our increasingly digital age through a distinctive and seductive visual language that speaks both through and about images and their place in the world today.”
So spoke Anne-Marie Beckmann, director of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, announcing the artist Cao Fei as the 2021 winner of the foundation’s prestigious photography prize. Cao, Beckmann said, offers a “a uniquely poetic dystopia” in her work exploring humanity’s relationship with technology.
Cao seems a prescient choice for the £30,000 award, which honours “significant contributions to photography over the previous 12 months”. She was selected for her 2020 exhibition Cao Fei: Blueprints, hosted at the Serpentine Galleries, which offered an “exploration of virtuality”, examining “how it has radically altered our perception of self and changed the way we understand reality”.
The Deutsche Börse judges noted that while Blueprints was made up of work produced pre-pandemic, its themes addressed the “strange times” that Covid-19 has brought about and spoke to “the need for human connection.”
“She captures the particular isolation and alienation experienced in our increasingly digital age through a distinctive and seductive visual language that speaks both through and about images and their place in the world today.”
Cao’s Serpentine show hosted works including Whose Utopia? (2006), Asia One (2018) and La Town (2014), which variously assess “the impact of technology, virtual realities, urbanisation and the alienating effects of mechanised labour on individuals and communities.”
The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation said: “Although each of Cao Fei‘s worlds appear to teeter on the edge of apocalyptic uncertainty, her characters navigate these complex and chaotic realities with vigour and agency, harnessing the unique possibilities of technology in order to shape a collective future.”
Cao’s work is currently on display at London’s Photographer’s Gallery until 26 September as part of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2021 exhibition. Also included in the show are the works of Cao’s fellow nominees, Poulomi Basu, Alejandro Cartagena and Zineb Sedira.
Story source: The Photographers’ Gallery and The Guardian