Our Family is a four-part family history art project that chronicles the life stories of four generations of the Cao family: Cao Huimin, Cao Zhennan, Cao Zhixiong, and Cao Mengqin. Through a diverse range of mediums—including archives, stills, installations, and oral history—the work closely intertwines the vicissitudes of individual destinies with the historical transformations of the past century.
Searching for Cao Huimin: Centered on Cao Huimin (b. 1898), the son of a late-Qing Dynasty postal official. After traveling alone to Hong Kong in 1951, he eventually vanished without a trace, yet his descendants faced interrogation and political implication in the 1970s due to rumors that he had "defected to Taiwan." This section features the archival lightbox Shun Pao Wedding Announcement and the oral history audio The Last Message. Combining observations of folk beliefs and the Dharma boat spirit-sending rituals during an artist residency in Taiwan, the artist also created Gods of Taiwan, Shrine for Cao Huimin, and Dharma Boat Gathering, reconstructing a spiritual and iconographic spatial connection between Cao Mengqin and Cao Huimin.
Cao Zhennan's Deafening Silence: Focuses on Cao Huimin's eldest son, Cao Zhennan (b. 1926). Traumatized by successive political movements, he remained profoundly silent throughout his life, making sounds almost exclusively when patting his pillow before sleep each night. This chapter presents the photographic installation Portrait of Cao Zhennan.
605: Revolves around the Third Front Construction experiences of Cao Zhennan's second son, Cao Zhixiong (b. 1948). In 1969, he was reassigned from Shanghai to the state-owned Leshan Paper Mill (Code 605) in Sichuan, only managing to return to Shanghai in 2002. This section includes the archival lightbox Cao Zhixiong, the dual-channel video 605 Living Quarters – 2025, and poetic installation— My Horse-Riding Father, Carsick at the End of the Forest Road Ever Since and seal-carving installationThirty Shanghainese. These installations explore the planned economy's allocation of "frontier" timber resources and eastern human labor, while reconstructing the memory of the grueling train journeys into Sichuan.
He Doesn't Want to Die, But He Wants to Make Art: Narrates the contemporary circumstances of Cao Zhixiong's only son, Cao Mengqin (b. 1980), who is now an artist. Born in Factory 605, he eventually secured a Shanghai household registration (hukou) through policies related to the Third Front Construction. Through the corpus-based digital interactive installation She Doesn't Want to Die, But She Wants to Go to Paris, the readymade He Doesn't Want to Die, But He Wants to Make Artworks, and the text installation I Don't Want to Die, But I Want to..., this section draws a parallel between the dilemma of young people trapped in hyper-consumption desires on social media (the anonymous confession account "Paris Toilet") and the artist's own creative desires wrestling with practical funding limits and mental exhaustion. It serves as an introspective microcosm of his twenty-year artistic career.

A story told from a first-person perspective, originating from an event where a photographer is visually impaired due to an accident caused by the alcohol intoxication during the Shanghai Lockdown back to Covid-19 pandemic 2022. He experiences two worlds after the unfortunate incident — the physical world where he relies on his hearing and blurred vision to take photos, and the mental world where he engages in photography by the memories of a collection of his past work. In this work, the artist continues to explore the symbolism of the past, while responding to snapshot photography.

Artist(with Mr Fang Xiaohe) converted a historical building at Gengle Hall, Suzhou, into a room-sized camera obscura. The resulting images were displayed in one of the garden's pavilions, accompanied by a Chinese literati salon ritual.

A photo fiction told a story of a filmmaker visiting friends and places for the inspiration.

Shadow Trio is a music, visual, and poetry trio founded in Beijing，2008 by pianist Zhang Jialin, cellist Song Zhao, and artists Cao Mengqin and Zhang Yan.