Asia One 2018 is a major new single-channel video production by Cao Fei, one of the best known Chinese artists of her generation, and one of the few women artists from China to achieve a high profile internationally. The work creates a cinematic love triangle between a robot and the only two human workers at an automated, online retail warehouse. It is the first public presentation to emerge from her most ambitious project to date: an examination of the inner lives and working conditions of employees at three of the most advanced technology and distribution facilities in contemporary China. These include China's first computer factory, opened in secrecy in 1957, but recently privatised and on the verge of closure; a best practice, ultra-high technology plant in Shenyang manufacturing BMWs for China's aspirational class; and the logistics hub of JD.com, an innovative online retailer and major competitor of Alibaba. Granted unprecedented access to interview JD.com employees and film onsite, Cao Fei has created a surreal narrative about a China that could exist at no other point in time, composed of striking images, engaging characters and even choreographed dance sequences.

Asia One follows the monotonous working day of a young man and a young woman, who, with the exception of the woman's robot assistant, are alone in the 'Asia One Unmanned Warehouse'. To stave off the drudgery, they create small games within the space, which evolve into mischief making among the conveyer belts and goods chutes. These scenes interweave with surreal dream sequences in which desktop objects balloon into giant props for imaginary dancers who perform Cultural Revolution-era model operas to 1990s dance hits.

Cao Fei has previously examined the lives of workers at a Siemens factory in Guangdong in 2006 for the extraordinary video and installation series 'Whose Utopia?', which brought her to international attention. Other video and film works have touched on the themes and aesthetics of science fiction and apocalyptic cinema, from zombie movies to the evocation of wartime trauma in the films of Alain Resnais, as they apply to the globalised cityscape. Combining these elements with a rich examination of contemporary China – a China which, the artist observes, will be completely different in three years – Asia One is a compelling work of unmatched scope within the artist's oeuvre.