Cao Fei's largest UK exhibition to date is to open at the Hayward Gallery in spring 2027

The Hayward Gallery has announced the largest UK solo exhibition to date by Chinese multimedia artist Cao Fei, which is to open in April 2027. The survey will chart her practice from the early 2000s to the present, and will mark the UK debut of The Birth (2026) alongside earlier works including Whose Utopia (2006), RMB City (2007–2011) and Asia One (2018). It will be the second iteration of her first major European survey, following Testimonies to the Near Future at Kunstmuseum Basel in June 2026.

Cao Fei. Photo by Samuel Bramley, courtesy Kunstmuseum Basel.

Born in Guangzhou in 1978, Cao Fei works across film, photography and digital media, drawing on technology, video games, science fiction, pop culture and cinema to reflect a rapidly changing society. Her exhibitions are known for turning gallery spaces into immersive environments, from recreated industrial warehouses to video arcades and vintage cinema foyers. Yung Ma, Senior Curator, says her art "straddles immediate realities and speculative futures, unreservedly crossing boundaries between the real, the fantastical and the virtual."

Installation view of The Birth in Dash, Fondazione Prada, 2026. Photo: Peng Jing. Courtesy of the Fondazione Prada. 

The Birth is a three channel video installation in the form of a woven, temple-like shrine made from fertiliser sacks, harvest props and decorative paper banners, which looks at the use of drones in farming across China and Southeast Asia and how new technologies meet older rituals. Whose Utopiawill turn part of the gallery into a factory dormitory, with a video that places documentary footage of workers in a lightbulb factory alongside dream sequences.

Cao Fei, Still from Cosplayers, 2004. Single channel video, 9min 12 sec. Courtesy of the artist, Creative Vitamin Space and Sprüth Magers.

Early landmark projects Cosplayers (2004) and RMB City will also feature, the latter a virtual metropolis built on the online platform Second Life, where Cao adopted the avatar China Tracy and invited players around the world to construct the city.

More recent work will include Meta-mentary (2022), which asks passers-by where the Metaverse is and what it means to them, Super Delivery (2024), a playable artwork that fuses physical reality with a Super Mario style digital experience, and Hongxia (2019–2024), made while Cao was using an abandoned 1950s theatre in Beijing as her studio. A fully illustrated catalogue with critical essays and a conversation with the artist will accompany the exhibition.

Installation view of Duotopia in Cao Fei: Testimonies to the Near Future, Kunstmuseum Basel, 2026. Photo: Samuel Bramley. Courtesy of the artist.

Tickets will go on sale to Southbank Centre Members on Wednesday 21 October 2026 and to the general public on Thursday 22 October 2026, with discounted tickets available through the Southbank Centre Under-30s scheme.

Cao Fei will be at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London, 20 April - 25 July 2027. Visit southbankcentre.co.uk to book your tickets now.