As notions of art and beauty continue to be disassembled and repackaged with increasing vigor around the planet, new spaces for creative exploration emerge on a daily basis. Unfortunately much of it is pomp and fluff – ineptly masked pastiche. Innovative works that push aesthetic boundaries while challenging the relationship between art and observer appear intermittently. For now, some of the most compelling terrain for imaginative probing takes place in cyberspace, and one Chinese artist remains at the vanguard of this emerging, and sometimes lucrative, field of fancy.

Cao Fei, a 29-year-old Guangzhou native, uses the much-heralded Second Life online world as an artistic medium. The user-generated virtual environment first inspired her video project i.Mirror, a Second Life documentary using screen captures of her digital avatar dubbed China Tracy. Cao Fei begins the sequence of videos with a quote taken from William J. Mitchell’s Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, “I construct, and I am constructed, in a mutually recursive process that continually engages my fluid, permeable boundaries and my endlessly ramifying networks. I am a spatially extended cyborg.” What follows is a surreal montage of dreamlike landscapes interlaced with fleeting relationships. Cao Fei calls it an illusion, but one dominated by youth, beauty, and money – something too well connected to reality and therein capable of transcending the many boundaries commonly placed between the digital and physical self.

Her newest project, RMB City, is also making waves in the international art circuit with its recent appearance at Art Basel in Miami and the Istanbul Biennial. Designed completely within Second Life, RMB City is a recreation of China’s social landscape in all its paradoxical glory. Giant panda’s hang from cranes while the Bird’s Nest stadium lies partially submerged off the island’s waterfront. Even Tiananmen Square has a swimming pool. Her manifesto explains, “RMB City… doesn’t restore the full present, nor does it recall our reminiscence of the past. It’s a mirror that partially reflects; we see where we were coming from, discover some of the ‘connections’ that fill the pale zone between the real and the virtual, the clues of which get disturbed, enriched, and polished.” Still, plots on the island are up for sale at prices only someone with Cao Fei’s clout could demand for cyber art. A European collector already secured his nook of virtual real estate for 100,000 Euros. Apparently participation comes at a price.

Second Life has drawn its fair share of praise as it blends formerly disparate modes of collective experience, but Cao Fei now promises to take it to a new level. RMB City, as a work of art, cannot be enjoyed outside a digital network. Its environment demands continual submersion into virtual spaces – liminal worlds fueled by self-expression and unfettered by social mores. For some it might continually erode their reality, but others find solace in the online worlds and continue to explore different aspects of the self as Cao Fei lives through China Tracy.

The art of telling stories using caricatures dates back to prehistoric man. Although cave paintings didn’t survive Beijing’s urban upheaval, new and more subversive forms of pictorial narration now issue forth from the comic underground. The once popular bison and ibex motifs of yore gave way to more pertinent contemporary themes such as teen angst, social detachment, and disgruntled robots. One of Beijing’s leading cliques of illustrators, aptly dubbed Cult Youth, take innovative strides with such matters in their newly minted anthology of graphic shorts.

Whether you like it or not, comic books and graphic novels are turning into one of the most widespread and influential forms of popular culture. Although China is far from eclipsing Japan’s manga scene, younger generations in Beijing with unprecedented access to foreign media are getting hooked. Cult Youth stands at the forefront of this movement. Guoqi (郭麒), one of twenty plus Cult Youth affiliated artists, noted, “that caricatures from any historical period are very valuable, but this generation in China saw many comics from different countries while growing up and now understand their important nature. People no longer believe comics are for children only.” Everyday occurrences enter the illustrator’s palette and take on new forms that fascinate both the young and old.

The most appealing nature of Cult Youth’s newest anthology is the eclectic array of themes presented in each graphic short. In many ways, it mirrors the kaleidoscope of often-conflicting interests, desires, and traditions that exist in modern China. Ca (擦), one of the founding members of Cult Youth, expounded, “We don’t say exactly who we are. We don’t pretend to represent any particular thing about China. Rather, our work grows out of our own personal interests. We have a wide range of opinions and aren’t primarily interested in any sort of pure documentary effort or work that invokes a feeling of social responsibility.” The unparalleled multiplicity of people in China defies any generalization and Cult Youth mirrors that chaos with their unstinting and often trenchant conceptual takes on life in the Middle Kingdom.

Still, many of the Cult Youth artists claim to grapple with a materialistic void growing within society and therefore feel their influence is gaining momentum. “China’s masses deal with an impoverished mainstream culture. Many are hungry for more, and it seems Cult Youth’s free and willful comics is what they need,” asserted Songqi (宋麒), Guoqi’s (郭麒) twin brother. With more dedicated readers, the anthology certainly resonates in a particular manner – the witty and insightful strips draw you in with their arresting and sometimes grotesque illustrations.

Cult Youth personifies the increasing number of Chinese becoming aware of the impact of international media on their country and the disjunction it represents from the experience of previous generations. “Older people had a world of their own,” Ca (擦) continued, “Such things cannot be passed on. The new youth access everything.” Many of the artists expressed the need to lead people to a new understanding of the information explosion occurring around them and therein present new outlets for individual expression while underhandedly capturing the pitfalls of modern China. According to Heilichi (黑荔枝), “Independent thinking leads to happiness.” There is a growing sense among the Cult Youth illustrators that even if they get labeled as outsiders, their work will continue to speak for itself.

In the end, Cult Youth still agrees on one thing: they want people to laugh and appreciate the absurdities of life. There is a mischievous air about the group as they reinterpret the already convoluted world surrounding them in Beijing. Not many of them know what the future holds, but they love their work and produced a unique anthology of graphic shorts that present a small but captivating window into contemporary China.