The Artist

About the artist: Cai Guo-Qiang

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, a coastal city in the province of Fujian, in southeast China. The port city’s remarkably rich history has been an essential source of inspiration for the artist’s oeuvre. During the era of Mao, some customs prohibited in other areas survived in Quanzhou and stimulated Cai’s childhood.

In the 1980s Cai studied stage design in Shanghai. In 1986, he moved to Japan, and in 1995, he moved to New York, where he lives today. Cai defines himself as a real “citizen of the world”, which explains the weakness of cultural barriers so essential to his work.

In 1996, the work Cry Dragon/Cry Wolf: The Ark Of Genghis Khan, was a finalist in inaugural Hugo Boss Prize at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which acknowledges innovation in the visual arts and was a major catalyst in the artist’s rise to international fame. It is among the highlights of the museum’s contemporary art collection and was exhibited in Bilbao in 1999.

Three years later he was the recipient of the Golden Lion Award at the 48th Venice Biennale for the installation he presented at the millennium Biennale: Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard, 1999.

In 2007, Cai was awarded the 7th Hiroshima Art Prize. In tandem with the award, Cai’s exhibition at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in 2008 featured the explosion event Black Fireworks, realized at Motomachi Riverside Park near the Atomic Bomb Dome. Video documentation of this work is also part of the exhibition in Bilbao.

Cai has achieved wide international recognition through his solo exhibitions and large-scale outdoor explosion events, his active participation in international art events, and his artistic contribution to the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2008 Olympic Games.

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Cai Guo-Qiang in front of his gunpowder drawing Crocodile and Sun, 2007

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