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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260409T080000
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SUMMARY:Cao Fei: Dash
DESCRIPTION:Overview\nFondazione Prada presents “Dash\,” a new multimedia project by Chinese artist Cao Fei\, at its Milan headquarters from April 9 to September 28\, 2026. The exhibition occupies the ground floor and first floor of the Podium\, Fondazione Prada’s central exhibition building designed by OMA. It is produced by Fondazione Prada in close collaboration with the artist and represents the culmination of three years of fieldwork across southern and northwestern China and Southeast Asia. \nThe title refers to the high-frequency sound of a drone in flight: that precise\, autonomous buzz of a machine operating at the edge of human grasp. Cao Fei positions this sound as the sonic signature of a technological moment in which the tools of agriculture\, and by extension of subsistence itself\, are being fundamentally reorganised by automation\, artificial intelligence\, and remote sensing systems. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue published by Fondazione Prada\, with a foreword by Miuccia Prada\, a conversation between Cao Fei and Rem Koolhaas\, a science fiction story by the artist\, and essays by scholars\, curators\, and experts. \nFocus\nDash examines smart agriculture not as a solution to planetary crisis but as a dense field of contradictions\, where automation promises efficiency while quietly rewriting labour\, memory\, and the relationship between humans and land. The exhibition’s conceptual framework is organised around a diagram Cao Fei calls CHT Triad: Cosmos\, Human\, Technics\, which proposes a non-hierarchical relationship in which technology is a co-author of human becoming rather than a tool in human hands. \nThe project builds on Cao Fei’s two-decade inquiry into technological modernity’s effects on Chinese society\, moving from factories and logistics networks (as in “Whose Utopia\,” 2006\, and “Asia One\,” 2018) to agriculture\, the oldest and most foundational form of human relationship with land. The shift is not merely thematic. Smart farming is among the most consequential technological transformations of this century\, affecting food security\, land use\, labour markets\, ecological systems\, and the cultural fabric of rural communities globally\, yet it has been almost entirely absent from contemporary art discourse. \nCao Fei’s central provocation is drawn from an observation at a Chinese super farm in 2023: there were virtually no humans in the fields. In their place were drones\, autonomous vehicles\, and automated irrigation and harvesting systems. That condition\, she notes\, is not a future projection but an already existing present. \nHere\, satellite positioning systems converse with ritual geographies; artificial intelligence and traditional experience train one another; historical images and sensor signals generate visual resonance.\nCao Fei\, Exhibition Statement\, 2026 \nExhibition Structure\nGround Floor: The Agricultural Environment\nThe ground floor constructs a full-scale rural environment inside the Podium. A grain warehouse functions as a cinema screening the eponymous two-channel video “Dash” (47 min.). A temple built from fertilizer sacks houses three-channel video “The Birth\,” which documents the everyday reverence farmers across Southeast Asia extend to their agricultural drones\, offering flowers\, incense\, and ceremonies once reserved for rain deities. A new farmer’s training station and a banana plantation surrounded by solar panels\, smart agricultural machinery\, and autonomous vehicles complete the floor. The installation structures were developed by Small Production; banners and cushions were designed by Xiang Gao. \nThe temple built from industrial waste packaging is the exhibition’s most precise formal decision: sacred and industrial occupy the same physical object. The videos inside show that this is not ironic or critical from a distance but an accurate description of lived agricultural reality in regions where harvests determine survival. \nFirst Floor: Research and Archive\nThe first floor shifts from immersive environment to research archive. Documentary films\, photographs\, propaganda posters from the founding decades of the People’s Republic of China (1949 to 1980s)\, scientific and educational slides from the Reform and Opening-up era (1978 onwards)\, and Chinese folk records titled “Busy Farming” situate Cao Fei’s investigation within a broader historical and ideological context. \n“Land Ceremony\,” which greets visitors on this floor\, makes the continuity between ancient ritual and technological present physical: constructed from local Lombard rice and traditional folk materials decorated with drone components\, it draws directly on the ancient Chinese “rice dragon” ritual. The argument of the floor is that China’s current investment in agricultural technology is not a rupture from its history but a continuation of it. \nKey Works\n\nDash\, 2026Two-channel video\, colour\, sound\, 47 min. Produced by Fondazione Prada.\nThe Birth\, 2026Three-channel looped video with altar\, fertilizer sacks\, and XAG agricultural drone. Temple installation.\nDash-180cVirtual reality work placing the viewer inside the perspective of a discarded drone.\nSouthward Journey\, 2026Single-channel video\, colour\, sound\, 30 min.\nSuper Farms\, 2026Single-channel video documenting fully automated Chinese agricultural operations.\nLand Ceremony\, 2026Installation in Lombard rice and folk materials with drone components. First floor.\n\nCatalogue and Conversations\nThe exhibition catalogue is designed by graphic artist Evi O and published by Fondazione Prada. It includes an introduction by Miuccia Prada; a conversation between Cao Fei and Rem Koolhaas\, whose OMA has developed extensive research on countryside since 2012; a science fiction story by Cao Fei; and essays and interviews with scholars\, curators\, and experts. The Koolhaas conversation is a significant pairing: his countryside research and the broader OMA investigation of rural land transformation provide a direct intellectual counterpart to Cao Fei’s fieldwork methodology. \nAudience\nThe exhibition is open to the general public at Fondazione Prada’s Milan venue. It addresses audiences spanning contemporary art\, architecture\, design research\, technology studies\, and agricultural policy. Its five-month run gives it an extended presence in Milan’s cultural calendar\, overlapping with the city’s major design and architecture events in spring and summer 2026. \nEvent Details\n\n\n\nExhibition Dates\nApril 9 – September 28\, 2026\n\n\nVenue\nFondazione Prada\, Podium (ground and first floors)\, Largo Isarco 2\, Milan 20139\, Italy\n\n\nAdmission / Fees\nStandard Fondazione Prada admission applies — verify current pricing at fondazioneprada.org\n\n\nArtist\nCao Fei (Beijing\, China)\n\n\nRepresented by\nVitamin Creative Space; Sprüth Magers\n\n\nProduced by\nFondazione Prada\n\n\nInstallation Design\nSmall Production\n\n\nCatalogue Design\nEvi O\n\n\nCatalogue Includes\nIntroduction by Miuccia Prada; conversation between Cao Fei and Rem Koolhaas; science fiction story by Cao Fei; critical essays\n\n\nResearch Partner\nXAG (agricultural robotics company\, China)\n\n\n\n\n✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight\nDash is architecturally significant not as an exhibition about architecture but as one that takes the transformation of landscape\, land use\, and the built rural environment as its primary subject. The Podium at Fondazione Prada\, itself an OMA building\, hosts full-scale reproductions of grain warehouses\, temples\, and farming stations\, creating a space where the built environment and its technological reconfiguration are examined from inside. The Rem Koolhaas catalogue conversation is the clearest signal of this framing: his OMA countryside research and Cao Fei’s agricultural fieldwork share a subject and a methodology\, though they arrive from different disciplines. The exhibition’s most honest moment may be the temple built from fertilizer bags\, which refuses the comfortable separation between the sacred and the industrial that most cultural institutions maintain. Smart farming is reshaping land at a global scale; the fact that it has taken this long to enter the exhibition space is itself a form of institutional blindness that Dash implicitly names. \n\n\nClosing Note\nCao Fei has spent three years in fields across China and Southeast Asia to make this exhibition. That investment of time and direct research is visible in the specificity of the work and distinguishes Dash from exhibitions that take technology as a theme without engaging its actual material conditions. Running through September 2026\, it is among the most substantively researched solo presentations of the year in Europe\, and the most direct engagement with agricultural transformation as a subject for contemporary art practice.
URL:https://archup.net/event/dash/
LOCATION:Prada Foundation\, Largo Isarco\, 2 20139 Milan\, Milan\, Milan\, -\, Italy
CATEGORIES:Exhibitions
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DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260509T080000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20261123T170000
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SUMMARY:Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince
DESCRIPTION:Overview\nFondazione Prada presents “Helter Skelter: Arthur Jafa and Richard Prince” at Ca’ Corner della Regina\, its Venetian venue\, from May 9 to November 23\, 2026\, coinciding with the 61st Venice Art Biennale (press previews May 6 to 8). The exhibition is curated by Nancy Spector\, former Artistic Director of the Guggenheim Museum. It brings together more than fifty works spanning photographs\, videos\, installations\, sculptures\, and paintings by two of the most consequential American artists working today\, and reveals a creative conversation between them that has never previously been examined as a subject of exhibition. \nArthur Jafa (b. 1960) and Richard Prince (b. 1949) are separated by a decade and by the very different social positions from which they encounter American visual culture: Jafa as an African American man with a sustained mission to reinvigorate Black cinema and art; Prince from a position that oscillates between self-conscious critique of white masculinity and an almost clinical fascination with the American psyche’s underbelly. Yet both have developed practices rooted in appropriation\, image capture\, and the conversion of found visual material into art by force of selection and context alone. \nFocus\nThe exhibition’s curatorial logic rests on the argument that despite their different social positionalities and aesthetic registers\, Jafa and Prince share a fundamental artistic DNA: both are image scavengers operating in the tradition of the Duchampian readymade\, pulling from movies\, pulp novels\, comic books\, YouTube videos\, science fiction\, album covers\, record sleeves\, rock and roll posters\, first-edition Beat volumes\, newsreels\, celebrity memorabilia\, and social media posts. Neither seeks permission. Both convert source material into art through the act of selection and displacement alone. \nThe exhibition also features new work by each artist and a collaboratively conceived zine incorporating images exchanged between the artists during the process of making the exhibition. The installation unfolds across the ground and first floor of the Venetian palazzo through a series of thematic and conceptual juxtapositions\, combining works by both artists to illuminate each of their practices and surface shared subject matter and mutual obsessions. \nWhat comes into focus through the refracting lens of Jafa’s and Prince’s appropriation-based practices is an unflinching exposé on America: a country forever tarnished by its history of slavery\, defined by remarkable musical traditions rooted in Black culture\, and characterized by protest\, subcultures\, humor\, and celebrity.\nNancy Spector\, Curator\, 2026 \nThe Title\nThe title “Helter Skelter” functions as a palimpsest of meanings. It originates as a British amusement park ride. It became a 1968 song by Paul McCartney on the White Album. In late 1968\, cult leader Charles Manson appropriated it to predict an apocalyptic race war between Black and white Americans. It was also the title of a 1992 exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art\, Los Angeles\, which notably excluded Black visual artists. Reinvoked here\, the term contains the full complexity and messiness of its misuse in popular culture: an unruly readymade selected by the artists themselves to disrupt expectations\, and a precise expression of the composite\, collision-prone nature of this two-person show. \nKey Works\n\nArthur Jafa — Love is the Message\, the Message is Death (2016)Seven-minute video work. Widely considered among the most significant artworks of the 21st century. Collages found footage of Black American life\, joy\, violence\, spirituality\, and culture at music video intensity.\nArthur Jafa — LOLM (2022)Follow-up video work to Love is the Message. Continues Jafa’s exploration of Black American visual and sonic culture.\nArthur Jafa — SloPEX (2023)Recent video work. Part of Jafa’s sustained practice of constructing visual languages capable of carrying the emotional intensity of Black music.\nArthur Jafa — Mickey Mouse was a Scorpio (2017)Installation work from Jafa’s practice engaging appropriated popular culture imagery within a Black American cultural frame.\nRichard Prince — Cowboys seriesIconic rephotography series in which Prince rephotographed Marlboro Man cigarette advertisements\, separating image from commercial context to examine American masculine mythology.\nRichard Prince — Fashion and Gangs seriesPhotographic series extending Prince’s appropriation practice into fashion imagery and subcultural visual codes.\nCollaborative ZineA jointly conceived publication incorporating images exchanged between Jafa and Prince during the making of the exhibition. The first public document of their dialogue.\nNew Works (2026)New works by each artist produced specifically for this exhibition.\n\nThe Artists\nArthur Jafa\nArthur Jafa is a filmmaker\, cinematographer\, and visual artist whose practice centres on the relationship between Black music’s emotional and cultural intensity and the possibilities of Black visual image-making. He was Director of Photography on Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust” (1991) and Spike Lee’s “Crooklyn” (1994). His 2016 video “Love is the Message\, the Message is Death” brought his work to widespread international attention; ARTnews has described it as the best artwork of the 21st century so far. He participated in the 2019 Venice Biennale main exhibition curated by Ralph Rugoff. \nRichard Prince\nRichard Prince is a central figure of the Pictures Generation\, the loosely grouped American artists who\, from the late 1970s onward\, appropriated and re-presented media images to interrogate the construction of desire\, identity\, and belief through mass culture. His Cowboys series\, Nurse Paintings\, and various celebrity and subcultural rephotography works have made him one of the most influential and legally controversial figures in late twentieth and early twenty-first century American art. He participated in the 2003 Venice Biennale. He is represented by Galerie Max Hetzler among others. \nCurator\nNancy Spector is a curator and critic who served as Artistic Director and Chief Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Her practice centres on contemporary American and European art with particular attention to questions of identity\, politics\, and appropriation. The Helter Skelter pairing is consistent with her long-standing curatorial interest in artists who use popular culture as critical raw material. \nContent Note\nFondazione Prada has noted that the exhibition includes artworks featuring explicit and potentially disturbing content\, including scenes of violence\, nudity\, and sexual imagery. Adults are advised to consider these factors before visiting with minors. \nEvent Details\n\n\n\nExhibition Dates\nMay 9 – November 23\, 2026\n\n\nPress Previews\nMay 6–8\, 2026\n\n\nVenue\nCa’ Corner della Regina\, Fondazione Prada Venice\, Santa Croce 2215\, Venice\, Italy\n\n\nConcurrent Event\n61st Venice Art Biennale (May 9 – November 22\, 2026)\n\n\nAdmission / Fees\nStandard Fondazione Prada admission — verify current pricing at fondazioneprada.org\n\n\nArtists\nArthur Jafa (b. 1960); Richard Prince (b. 1949)\n\n\nCurator\nNancy Spector\n\n\nWorks\n50+ including photographs\, videos\, installations\, sculptures\, paintings\, and a collaborative zine\n\n\nOrganizer\nFondazione Prada\n\n\nPublication\nExhibition catalogue published by Fondazione Prada\n\n\nContent Advisory\nContains explicit imagery including violence\, nudity\, and sexual content\n\n\n\n\n✦ ArchUp Editorial Insight\nThe conceptual problem the exhibition sets itself is genuinely difficult: to demonstrate that Jafa and Prince are in productive dialogue rather than merely adjacent in institutional space. The appropriation argument — both descend from Duchamp\, both take without permission — is real but risks flattening the very different conditions under which they take. Prince’s appropriation has consistently been legible as critique from a position of cultural proximity to its sources; his lawlessness is a form of privilege legible as irony. Jafa’s taking operates from a position of historical exclusion\, extracting imagery of Black life from cultural flows that have systematically profited from Black culture while marginalising Black authorship. These are not equivalent positions\, and whether the thematic juxtapositions the exhibition organises actually illuminate the difference rather than dissolving it is the critical question Nancy Spector’s curation must answer. The collaborative zine — images exchanged between the two artists during the making of the show — is the most interesting single element precisely because it is the evidence of actual dialogue rather than curatorial construction of one. Its content will determine whether the exhibition’s central claim holds. \n\n\nClosing Note\nSix and a half months at Ca’ Corner della Regina\, opening on the first public day of the Venice Biennale and running through almost its entire duration\, positions “Helter Skelter” as one of the most prominent collateral events of the 2026 Biennale season. For those engaged with the politics of appropriation\, the construction of American visual culture\, and the contested relationship between Black and white artistic practices in the United States\, the exhibition is among the most intellectually charged gatherings of this year.
URL:https://archup.net/event/helter-skelter-arthur-jafa-and-richard-prince/
LOCATION:Venice\, Italy
CATEGORIES:Exhibitions
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