By: Ankita Bhanot
This past September, Chinese-American digital artist and designer Yuqi Cao showcased her work on two continents, reflecting her growing international presence. She is featured in “Madrid Open Art” at The Holy Art Gallery in Spain and “Inner Landscapes” in China – two group exhibitions that underscore the global scope of today’s contemporary art scene. These events, held almost back-to-back, highlight not only Cao’s creative versatility but also the worldwide platforms now embracing interdisciplinary digital art.” Participating in exhibitions from Los Angeles to Madrid to Chongqing in the same year is surreal,” Cao says. “It shows that creativity and technology really can transcend borders, connecting with people everywhere on a human level.”
Madrid Open Art: An International Showcase in Spain
In Madrid, The Holy Art Gallery’s Open Art exhibition offers a vibrant cross-section of contemporary art from around the world. Madrid Open Art, running September 3–6, 2025, is part of The Holy Art’s series of open-call exhibitions that travel to cultural capitals. The Holy Art has hosted shows in over 20 cities worldwide – from London and New York to Tokyo and Athens – building a truly global arts community. Their mission is to provide “accessible opportunities for artists everywhere” on an extraordinary scale: over 20,000 artists and 500,000 visitors have participated in Holy Art exhibitions to date. With gallery hubs in London, New York and Athens, the organization has quickly become “an international powerhouse within the world of contemporary and modern art”, dedicated to showcasing emerging talents globally.
“Madrid Open Art” reflects this inclusive ethos. Like The Holy Art’s other editions, it welcomes artists of all styles and mediums, with no fixed theme – from paintings and sculpture to digital installations and video art, even poetry. Works are displayed both in traditional gallery format and via “Art on Loop” digital screens, embracing new media. The result is an eclectic, multicultural exhibition bringing together creators from Europe, Asia, the Americas and beyond. For Yuqi Cao, being invited into the Madrid show situates her work in a cosmopolitan dialogue. The venue in Madrid places her alongside international peers in a contemporary art hub, raising her profile before an audience of collectors, critics and fellow artists. “It’s exciting to see my art in Madrid’s creative mix,” Cao notes. “I hope to share a bit of my perspective and learn from the incredible diversity of voices around me.”
Inner Landscapes: Exploring the Mind in Chongqing
Half a world away, Cao’s work is also on view in “Inner Landscapes,” an international group exhibition in Chongqing, China. Organized by the Independent & Image Art Space (Chongqing) and promoted via the New Media Caucus network, Inner Landscapes runs from September 20 to October 20, 2025. It brings together 19 artists from around the globe to explore the elusive terrain of inner worlds. The show’s curatorial direction is deeply introspective: centered on the idea of “inner landscapes,” it weaves photography, painting, collage, digital art and more into a cross-cultural, cross-media visual conversation. As the exhibition description notes, here the “inner landscape” is “not a visible terrain of nature, but a spiritual geography shaped by emotion, memory, and thought”. Artists move between figuration and abstraction to visualize intimate emotions and subconscious states, making the unseen seen.
Yuqi Cao’s inclusion in Inner Landscapes highlights her alignment with these themes. Born in Nanjing and now based in Los Angeles, Cao often probes the intersection of technology, nature and human experience – effectively mapping her own inner and outer worlds through digital media. The Chongqing exhibition’s title in Chinese, “看山还是山” (literally “Seeing the mountain is still seeing the mountain”), draws from Eastern philosophy and echoes the reflective journey in Cao’s art. “This exhibit is about the landscapes inside us,” she says. “It resonates with my belief that art can reveal our shared emotional terrain, no matter our culture.” In Inner Landscapes, her work stands alongside pieces by artists from Asia, Europe, Africa and North America, underscoring the exhibition’s international scope. The New Media Caucus’s involvement also signals the show’s new-media focus and global reach, ensuring that digital artists like Cao find a platform amid more traditional forms.
Over the past few years, Cao’s innovative projects have garnered growing recognition. She has been honored with a string of prestigious international design awards, including the Red Dot Design Award, iF Design Award, International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), and the German Design Award. (Her recent digital platforms for mental health and workplace innovation also collected accolades like the Muse Design Awards, underscoring the social impact of her design philosophy.) In the art world, Cao’s work has likewise begun earning global attention. Earlier in 2025, she was featured at the Guangdong International Art Week in China, where her surreal “Mountain” series – a meditative 3D digital landscape experience – was showcased to the public. That series, which recentered a transparent rotating mountain as a symbol of nature’s ever-shifting vitality, invited viewers to reconsider humanity’s relationship with the environment. The piece’s debut in Guangdong and now Cao’s participation in Inner Landscapes reflect a consistent focus on balanced coexistence between humans and ecology, a theme woven throughout her art.
As Yuqi Cao’s work graces gallery walls and screens in both Madrid and Chongqing, her evolving global presence mirrors the increasingly borderless nature of contemporary art. These two exhibitions – one in a European metropolis, the other in the heart of China – each amplify aspects of Cao’s identity as a 21st-century creator. In Madrid, she stands among emerging talents pushing the envelope of new media on an international stage. In Chongqing, she engages in a thoughtful East-West dialogue about inner experience and cultural perspective. For Cao, the dual honor is also a homecoming of sorts: a chance to share her vision in the country of her birth while building new bridges abroad. “It’s a humbling milestone,” she says of her September exhibitions. “As an artist, you hope your ideas can resonate widely. This year, I’ve seen how a spark born in one corner of the world can find its way into many others.”