In front of a faded red brick wall, a woman in a black blazer and pants sits on a concrete sink, chest partly exposed, legs spread wide. From between them a broken faucet erupts, ejecting an violent stream of water like a flash of blinding light. The posture blurs the lines between masculine and feminine, and the subject’s intense gaze commands attention, daring viewers to confront her and the explicitly subversive intent behind the image.

This photographic artwork, titled “Dragon Head” (a direct translation of the Chinese for “faucet”), is a self-portrait of Chinese artist Cao Yu. Made in 2020, Cao explains that it was an attempt to capture her idealized self in a state of being that liberates her from traditional constraints.

“The edges of the sink symbolize various inherent limitations in our lives—such as gender, appearance, origins, nationality, and the societal expectations we learn from a young age about what we should or shouldn’t do,” she tells TWOC. “These frameworks can confine an individual’s entire life, and this burst represents innovative or rebellious thoughts that are often seen as crazy by the majority. However, to me, it embodies a vibrant energy that surges forth.”

Three years after the original work’s creation, Cao imprinted the image on a flag styled after ancient Chinese military banners from the Three Kingdoms period (220 – 280). She then traveled to various landscapes around the world—across nearly 20 cities and regions, from the uninhabited borderlands of Italy to the waterfalls of Switzerland and the rugged mountains of Central China—hoisting it as a proclamation for people to forget their intrinsic limitations and create freely. All the while, despite the curious glances from passersby, she encouraged herself with the declaration: “Creativity is everywhere, and I was born to do this!”

“I don’t want my artwork ‘Dragon Head’ to be confined within the seemingly lofty and distant walls of an art museum. I want to spread art like dandelion seeds, scattering it across the world and reaching all corners,” Cao says.

However, some traditions are harder to break than others, and the flag, dubbed “Dragon Head - Shanhe Declaration” (shanhe means mountains and rivers in Chinese, referring more generally to the world at large), is Cao’s entry into the recent “Pictures of the Post-80s Generation: Generational Leap” at TANK Shanghai. There, it sits alongside the works of 35 of the most influential Chinese contemporary artists working today.

Born in 1988 in China’s northeastern Liaoning province, Cao’s work now spans a breadth of mediums including video, installation, performance, photography, sculpture, and painting. With her distinctive cross-disciplinary practice, incisive and bold artistic language, and witty and ironic expression, she has emerged as a leading figure among China’s new generation of female artists. And while her work has been known to attract controversy at home, that hasn’t stopped, or perhaps is the secret behind, Cao’s formidability.

A prime example is “Fountain” (2015), one of Cao’s earliest works and which she presented during her master’s graduation exhibition at Beijing’s prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2016. In the 11-plus minute silent video, the camera points directly down Cao’s naked torso, giving a first-person perspective of the milk that she massages from her breasts, spraying upward and covering her body until there is nothing left to give. Aged 26 at the time, and filmed shortly after giving birth, the piece was a direct and deliberate response to the frequent mastitis she was suffering.

The piece could be regarded as a contemporary, feminine take on the fountain, which has a rich historical and aesthetic significance in art—from Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ neoclassical depiction of a nude woman languorously pouring water from a ceramic jug in “The Fountain” to Dadaist Marcel Duchamp’s iconic “Fountain” urinal, and later, Bruce Nauman’s irreverent “Self-Portrait as a Fountain.” That however didn’t stop the Central Academy of Fine Arts from labeling the work as comprising “pornographic exposure” and Cao receiving a barrage of harassment online.

Undeterred, Cao doubled down, releasing “The Labourer” two years later. In the austere, spotlit video, Cao’s bare feet are illuminated as they slowly knead a mound of flour, urine slowly trickling down and binding the mixture—a provocative commentary on womanhood and domesticity. In her follow-up piece, 2023’s “Piss-Take a Look at Yourself” (a play on the Chinese proverb 撒泡尿照照自己), Cao used a combination of micturate and acrylic to make a series of upright mirrors that mimic a puddle of urine in both shape and color. The warped, warm reflection compels viewers to inspect the person staring back—to use urine as a “mirror” to see their actual worth, as the saying suggests.

“While creating ‘The Labourer’ series, I looked down and saw my reflection in the urine,” Cao recalls to TWOC. “At first, it was very uncomfortable; unlike water, seeing myself in urine felt off-putting. Urine represents chaos and filth but is also a bodily residue. Reflecting on oneself through this medium can be profound.”

In reference to the work’s title, she states, “Though it sounds extreme, it encourages self-reflection. Many people live in a daze, making it hard to awaken to their true selves. I cherish this work and consider this saying my New Year’s blessing—finding oneself amid chaos feels far more authentic than the typical well-wishes for longevity and prosperity.”

Brash and subversive, it’s perhaps unsurprising that these pieces are weighed by critics through the lens of “feminism,” a tag to which Cao remains largely indifferent. “Those who interpret my work as ‘feminist’ have fallen into a trap. It’s overly simplistic and crude to judge everything by gender—creativity knows no gender. Many media outlets and critics have framed my work as an ‘offense’ to the audience, but I honestly don’t care; I believe that others’ evaluations have no direct relation to my creative process,” Cao tells TWOC.

Cao’s indifference to external pressures isn’t something innate, but as she explains, the result of a long and ongoing healing process. “When I was born, my family said, ‘The Cao family is out of luck, they had a girl,’” she says, a side effect of being born during some of the strictest years of China’s one-child policy, when many families favored sons. “My family didn’t like girls, so when I was a child, neither my grandfather nor my father really liked me.”

Her ongoing series “Everything is Left Behind,” started in 2019, is a direct act of confronting and overcoming this pain. Using her personal growth as a thread—in this case, via her naturally shedded hair—she writes about the judgments of the outside world, such as gender bias, discrimination about her appearance, and being ridiculed for not fitting in.

The creation process was slow and painstaking. Finding her hair unwieldy to bend into shape, Cao instead cut it into exact lengths for each character stroke, creating an etched effect. “I used the softest material—hair—as though it were the hardest carving knife,” she explains. “As I carefully etched words—representing the harsh words and mainstream societal values I encountered—into the canvas, I focused only on the characters themselves, forgetting their meaning. These painful words were deconstructed, and the trauma they caused turned to ashes, giving new energy to my art.”

While this canvas-bound public diary is deeply personal, Cao discovered it also spoke for many others who have likewise been hurt by such prejudices. “The values of an era are usually quite similar, so this series is also a record of the time we live in. What surprised me after finishing this work was that many people left messages thanking me. I realized that art has a healing power for others too,” she says. “This work is the only one I feel I must create until the end of my life.”

Cao tells TWOC that the secret to her unconventional subject matter lies in viewing “studies in success as a form of failure.” In fact, she willfully acknowledges her success in her piece “I Have” (2017), a four-and-a-half-minute video in which she lists her achievements over the past two decades, including descriptions of her artistic talent, acquired wisdom, blossoming career, and fulfilling family life. When watching an updated and extended version released last year, viewers may experience a sense of distaste, thinking, “How arrogant, how showy.” However, Cao explains how she’s actually playing the role of a puppet, ensnared by society’s conventional views of having made it.

“As an artist, if you are deemed successful, it’s quite ironic,” she tells TWOC. “In the art world, you have to discard all past notions of success. Only by putting yourself in a position of total vulnerability can you create something truly new.”

Cao’s refusal to be confined by categories is clear in her approach to art. Even when she recently ventured into oil painting—a medium she hadn’t until that point particularly explored—she recalls how some commented sarcastically, “Why is Cao Yu painting now? Is she running out of money and planning to sell them?” But as Cao explains, “For me, painting is merely another medium to express my ideas, not an identity I wish to claim.”

One of her strongest works in the medium is “The Last Sparrow” (2022). The two-panel oil painting captures a scene straight from the Four Pests campaign, which between 1958 and 1962 sought to eradicate sparrows, rats, flies, and mosquitoes across China in hopes of boosting crop outputs. Cao says the inspiration behind it emerged from her reflections during COVID-19, which for her brought to the fore the madness and irrationality of human behavior.

“Humanity has long believed in its ability to conquer nature, yet history shows a recurring cycle of failed attempts. This irony fueled my creative drive. If it weren’t for the unique circumstances at that time and my personal experiences, I wouldn’t have been able to create this work.”

She describes how, as the painting’s 26 figures give frantic chase, the “last sparrow” stands alone above the frenzy, a detached observer of human folly. Its indifferent gaze seems to mock the madness below, embodying the destructive, irrational zeal that we still—despite our advances in scientific knowledge and technology—remain susceptible to. Unbeknownst to the gleeful assassins, however, is a pest infestation in the painting’s foreground that threatens to subsume a tree, a subtle foreboding arising from their efforts to bend the natural way of things.

Asked what we can expect from her next project, Cao, unlike her fervent pest killers, seems to express an unwillingness to force reality into being. “I never know what my next creation will be. It’s always something that emerges naturally from the things I observe, feel, or experience in life. Art comes from these moments of insight.” She continues, “The element of chance is truly wonderful. The idea of inevitability—it’s just meaningless.”

All images courtesy of Cao Yu