22 Facts About Cai Guo-Qiang

Cai Guo-Qiang is a Chinese artist who currently lives and works in New York City and New Jersey.

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China.

Cai Guo-Qiang's father, Cai Ruiqin, was a calligrapher and traditional painter who worked in a bookstore.

Cai Guo-Qiang grew up in a setting where explosions were common, whether they were the result of cannon blasts or celebratory fireworks.

However, Cai Guo-Qiang moved to Japan in 1986 as the movement was building.

In 1990, Cai Guo-Qiang began Projects for Extraterrestrials, which consisted of using large fireworks and extensive trails of blazing gunpowder that span across landscapes and building surfaces.

Cai Guo-Qiang initially began working with gunpowder drawings and ephemeral sculptures to foster spontaneity and confront the suppressive, controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China.

In 1998, Cai Guo-Qiang worked with fashion designer Issey Miyake on a one-off collection for Miyake's Guest Artist series.

For it, Cai Guo-Qiang arranged gunpowder on white garments in the form of dragons symbolizing life, and set fire to the powder to burn the images into the clothes.

In 2004, Cai Guo-Qiang installed Inopportune: Stage One and Inopportune: Stage Two at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

Cai Guo-Qiang is one of the most well-known and influential Chinese contemporary artists, having represented his country at the Venice Biennale in 1999 with his project Venice's Rent Collection Courtyard, a time-based sculpture which he had artisans recreate the Rent Collection Courtyard, a famous work of Socialist Realist propaganda sculpture.

Cai Guo-Qiang returned to Venice in 2005 to curate the Chinese pavilion.

Cai Guo-Qiang created Odyssey, a permanent gunpowder drawing for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in Fall 2010.

In December 2011, Cai Guo-Qiang: Saraab opened at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar - the artist's largest since his 2008 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum and his first solo exhibition ever in a Middle Eastern country.

In 2016, Cai Guo-Qiang was tasked with designing the Berggruen Philosophy Prize's trophy.

Cai's work was featured in the 2016 Netflix documentary Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang, highlighting his work with fireworks, particularly his 1,650-foot ladder of gunpowder.

Cai Guo-Qiang was highlighted in the 2018 BBC Civilisations, episode 9, The Vital Spark in which he was interviewed by Simon Schama, as an artist offering inspiration for our time.

Cai Guo-Qiang gained widespread attention as the Director of Visual and Special Effects for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Cai Guo-Qiang moved from Beijing to New York in 1995, but as of 2017, he continues to maintain a separate house in the former.

Cai Guo-Qiang intends for it to eventually become a foundation with public viewing.

Cai Guo-Qiang purchased a former horse farm in Chester, New Jersey, in 2011 from an Olympic equestrian.

Cai Guo-Qiang first met Gehry in 2009 at his Guggenheim Bilbao solo show, and their friendship included a 2013 trip to Cai Guo-Qiang's hometown of Quanzhou to propose a contemporary art museum.