How lockdown in Singapore inspired Chinese artist Cao Fei to realise her global pandemic project
- Isle of Instability is a series of home videos, drawings and sculptures made by Cao while she was in lockdown for 10 months with her family in the city state
- Disinfectant bottles and many other Covid-19 images in her show at Shanghai’s West Bund Art & Design Fair portray the new normal we all face
Singapore only became the backdrop for Cao Fei’s latest work because of Covid-19, but the much-in-demand artist, known for creating surreal videos concerning the epochal changes that her generation in China has witnessed, discovered that the “theatrical” nature of the city state allowed Isle of Instability (2020) to become an artistic monument to the many ups and downs that have emerged during the global pandemic.
The 42-year-old Beijing-based artist had flown to Singapore in January for the installation of Fu Cha (2020), a kinetic sculptural installation of a Chinese mythical raft that connects the sea and the skies commissioned for the Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden at National Gallery Singapore.
Her husband is Singaporean and the couple keeps a flat there for when they visit with their two children.
But she has never stayed there for as long as 10 months until this year, when flight cancellations and quarantine requirements forced her to cut down on her usually non-stop international travels.