Retro China meets the metaverse via Australia at Cao Fei: My City Is Yours, the Art Gallery of NSW’s Cao Fei’s first major solo exhibition in Australia. Housed in a warehouse-like playground in the Art Gallery’sallery’s Naala Badu building, Cao Fei’s work is incisive and touching, often surreal in tone, and ranges from examining the lives of Chinese factory workers – past, present and future – to paying tribute to her late sister, who lived in Sydney.

Over one weekend, one lucky winner and a friend will get to see (and interact with) Cao’s work and experience a pan-Asian banquet at the newly renovated Mod Dining, all courtesy of Art Gallery of NSW. The prize also includes an overnight stay in the newly refurbished 5-star luxury hotel, Sofitel Sydney Wentworth.

Multimedia artist Cao Fei’s body of work looks at the future through the lens of the past. In Cao Fei: My City Is Yours, she re-creates relics like the foyer of Beijing’s demolished Hongxia Theatre and juxtaposes them against visions of the future. Her full-length feature film Nova, in which a scientist accidentally digitises his son, plays in a theatre next to a VR experience that melds elements of the film with the Hongxia setting.

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Sydney’s now-closed Marigold restaurant is also reincarnated in one corner, using original furniture and fittings from the venue. But instead of yum cha delivered to each table, visitors feast on Cao’s early video work via old-school CRT TVs.

If the metaverse is more your style, whet your appetite with a wide-ranging vox pop in Meta-Mentary before heading into RMB City, a virtual metropolis Cao created within the world of Second Life, to see the irreverent but philosophical conversations between the artist’s online alter ego China Tracy and her San Francisco “boyfriend”, and a strange excursion with her talking animated baby from the game.

At a loose end after all that art? Add some culture with a visit to Chinatown, the setting of her new work Hip Hop: Sydney.

Prize includes:
Two Cao Fei: My City Is Yours exhibition tickets (valued at $70)
One night’s accommodation on March 29 at the Sofitel Sydney Wentworth (valued at $500)
Banquet lunch for two at Mod Dining (valued at $198)
A selection of merchandise, including the exhibition catalogue (valued at $200)

The competition is open from now until March 19; the winner will be drawn on March 20. To go in the draw to win, enter here.

Broadsheet is a proud media partner of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.