Chinese multimedia artist Cao Fei grapples with reality by exploring the digital world. Her subversive work tackles fraught topics—VR, avatar-filled online communities, robots—that may fill tech-adverse people with a mix of eye-rolling irritation and dread. For her first large-scale solo exhibition in the U.K., she debuts The Eternal Wave, a site-specific VR installation that considers the evolution of Beijing’s Jiuxianqiao district, where she lives and works. It sits alongside Asia One (2018), a film about automation, the human body, and labor; La Town (2014), a stop-motion movie set in a post-apocalyptic cityscape; and other pieces that blur the virtual and physical realms. —Tiffany Jow

Photo: Cao Fei, Asia One, 2018. Video, 63’20”. Courtesy the artist, Vitamin Creative Space, and Sprüth Magers.