Cai Guo-Qiang

Artist

• Born: December 8, 1957
• Place of Birth: Quanzhou, China

• Education: Shanghai Theatre Academy

• Significance: Cai Guo-Qiang is a Chinese artist known for using explosives to create art. Cai has used gunpowder to create individual sketches and has also produced multiple large-scale artistic explosive events throughout his career. Cai also has created varied art projects, ranging from sculptures to elaborate art installations to performance pieces. His extensive artistic career has earned him worldwide acclaim and numerous accolades.

Background

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in the city of Quanzhou in the Fujian Province of China. Cai grew up during the Cultural Revolution in China. This movement was started by Communist revolutionary Mao Zedong and promoted the spread of communism across the country. The Cultural Revolution was a very violent time for China and greatly affected the country's economy. As a child, Cai often heard artillery batteries firing into Taiwan, an area China desired to reincorporate into its territory. The movement also imposed new attitudes toward intellectualism. Mao Zedong discouraged reading and owning books, and those caught received severe punishments. Cai's father, a rare-book collector, secretly burned his entire collection during this period.

Cai enrolled at the Shanghai Theatre Academy in 1981 to study stage design, and he earned his bachelor of fine arts in 1985. During his time at school, Cai began experimenting with fuses and gunpowder in his stage work. His enthusiasm for explosions later extended into the artistic realm, and he began using explosives to create art. His technique usually involved laying gunpowder on paper and igniting the substance, which left markings on the surface. Cai moved to Japan in 1986, and his explosives artwork quickly gained recognition for its uniqueness.

The young artist became intrigued by Western physics during this period. He noticed a connection between the Western understanding of subatomic matter and Chinese Qi Gong cosmology, a concept he learned about from his study of Taoism. The theories of astrophysics paralleled the Taoist concepts Cai believed in, and he viewed astrophysicists as the mapmakers of Taoism's mysticism.

Life's Work

Cai continued experimenting with explosives throughout the late 1980s and eventually arrived at his Projects for Extraterrestrials in 1989. This project marked the beginning of a series of large-scale explosive events that garnered him international fame over the next decade. One of his grandest artistic explosions came in 1993 with Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 10. This event recruited hundreds of volunteers to lay out a line of explosives 10,000 meters (approximately 6.2 miles) in length from the west end of the Great Wall into the Gobi Desert that Cai later detonated by gunpowder fuse.

Cai relocated to New York in 1995, and introduced the West to his gunpowder drawings and detonation displays. His work was infused with themes of violence and destruction, even when he was not using explosives. He also regularly drew from an array of historical sources, with elements of ancient Chinese philosophies, military history, and Maoist ideology informing his art. His 1996 creation Cry Dragon/Cry Wolf: The Ark of Genghis Khan served as Cai's unofficial introduction into the New York art scene. The work featured an ascending series of branches with sheepskin bags attached throughout. At the bottom of the installation sat three running Toyota engines. Resembling a dragon in its form, the work was littered with symbolic references to Asian history and was created as a commentary on Asian expansionism in the West. The piece was short-listed for the Hugo Boss Prize at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

A number of Cai's works were also known to feature arrows piercing objects. His 1998 installation Borrowing Your Enemy's Arrows suspended a fishing boat frame covered in arrows in the air. The following year, he exhibited what many consider his seminal work, Venice's Rent Collection Courtyard. This piece was a reference to the 1965 sculpture Rent Collection Courtyard, a famous sculpture of the Chinese socialist-realist art canon featuring a cruel landlord collecting rent from poor tenants. Cai's piece stirred a great deal of controversy in China but earned him praise elsewhere. The work received the Golden Lion prize at that year's Venice Biennale.

Cai developed numerous innovative art installment series throughout the 2000s. This included the social project Everything Is Museum, which saw the artist producing museums of contemporary art in remote locations such as old kilns and military bunkers. His 2004 work Inopportune: Stage One featured nine cars lined up in a movielike progression designed to simulate the stages of a car bomb detonating. This was followed by Inopportune: Stage Two, a work involving life-size tiger replicas pierced with multiple arrows.

In 2008, the Guggenheim Museum hosted a retrospective of Cai's work titled I Want to Believe. That same year, the artist designed a spectacular fireworks display for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games. Cai hosted a solo exhibition in Brazil in 2013 titled Da Vincis do Povo, which toured the country. That same year, he created an explosions event for the city of Paris's Nuit Blanche festival.

In 2015, Cai returned to his hometown of Quanzhou to produce the explosion event Sky Ladder. The event involved the construction of a 1,650-foot (502-meter) ladder that ascended into the sky. Cai ignited the ladder on June 15. The entire process was filmed by documentary film director Kevin Macdonald, who turned his footage into the 2016 documentary Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang. The following year, Cai produced Cai Guo-Qiang: Fireflies, which he exhibited in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The project featured twenty-seven pedicabs affixed with hundreds of illuminated lanterns that rode through the city's Benjamin Franklin Parkway, marking the parkway's centennial anniversary.

Impact

Cai's explosives work has gained him international fame and prestige. His artwork has been exhibited in museums all over the world. He has been honored with multiple prestigious art awards throughout his career, and his innovative art installations have attracted millions of viewers. In 2012, Cai was awarded Japan's Praemium Imperiale, making him the first Chinese national to receive the prize. In May 2022, Cai received the John D. Rockefeller III Award, which was granted by the Asian Cultural Council.

Personal Life

Cai is married to Hong Hong Wu, with whom he has two daughters. The couple lives in New York's Soho district.

Bibliography

Aftab, Kaleem "How Cai Guo-Qiang Literally Lit the Art World on Fire." Vice, 15 Oct. 2016,www.vice.com/en‗us/article/nnk7vd/sky-ladder-cai-gua-qiang-interview. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

"Cai Guo-Qiang." Guggenheim, www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/cai-guo-qiang. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

"Cai Guo-Qiang." Praemium Imperiale, www.praemiumimperiale.org/en/laureate-en/laureates-en/cai-en. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

"Cai Guo-Qiang: Artist's Bio." Cai Studio, www.caiguoqiang.com/artists-bio/. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

"Cai Guo-Qiang: Fireflies." Association for Public Art, www.associationforpublicart.org/project/cai-guo-qiang-fireflies/. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

Cué, Elena. "Interview with Cai Guo-Qiang." Huffington Post, 23 Feb. 2015, www.huffingtonpost.com/elena-cue/interview-with-cai-guo-qiang‗b‗6738320.html. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.

Rosenbaum, Ron "Meet the Artist Who Blows Things Up for a Living." Smithsonian, Apr. 2013, www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/meet-the-artist-who-blows-things-up-for-a-living-4984479/?all. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024.