2021 MFA Thesis Exhibition
No Vacancy

Cai Shen, a Beijing-based interdisciplinary artist, was born in 1996, China. Cai earned her B.A. degree from the design department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (CAFA) in 2019 and then continued her graduate study at Parsons School of Design, graduating in 2021. Cai has been exhibiting her work both nationally and internationally. Recently, she presented her work in exhibitions such as DARKEST BEFORE DAWN Art in a Time of Uncertainty (2020, New York), Elite Young Artists Program (2019, China), 2117 (2017, China). In 2019, she had her first solo exhibition at The Victorian Artist Society, Melbourne, Australia. Meanwhile, she also works as a designer and educator.

Email: shencai1996@gmail.com                  Instagram: @​​caishen1204

Human beings are nothing more than programs written by DNA. As an observer, I re-edit and re-compose codes of human beings to reproduce them in the form of images, paintings, and installations. I became an interdisciplinary artist because the concept is far more important than the form in my creative process, and the structure always serves the idea, using the most appropriate way to express myself. Nowadays, in my creation, I use multi-media methods to examine the relationship between man and machine from the perspective of the observer. This observation point exists in a gray area, between human nature and machine nature, to explore the resulting product of these two. Like the semi-automated production in a factory now, it is impure, with both mechanical traces and human literature or spirituality. It is a hybrid, intricate, and undefinable. It is the epitome of this era. Maintaining a neutral attitude, I am the narrator of this era.