Each year, we identify the Asian artists on the rise, shining a light on the exciting and provocative works enriching the region’s artistic and cultural landscape. Chinese artist duo Cao Minghai and Chen Jianjun share their story.
Artists and transdisciplinary researchers Cao Minghao and Chen Jianjun live and work in Chengdu. Their art practice is research-based and process-driven, and their works highlight the reciprocal collaboration between them and their partners. With a particular interest in the material ecology of waters and the current socio-environmental realities of man, many of the duo’s intervention art projects are centred around the realities of rural villages and societies in China, a defining work being the long-term project Water System Refuge, initiated since 2015, which reflects on the historical changes of a local water system.
Other projects displayed in exhibitions and screenings around Asia and Europe include Green Snake: Women-Centred Ecologies at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, documenta fifteen in Kassel, Rethinking Nature at Madre Museum at the Shanghai Biennale in 2020-2021 and COSMOPOLIS #2.0: Repenser l’humain at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Cao and Chen won the 2022 Jonathan KS Choi Foundation Contemporary Art Award and the Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris in 2020.
