Cai Guo-Qiang

This is the first publication to synthesize the fundamental concepts and methodological pursuits behind the art of Cai Guo-Qiang (born 1957), since his 2008 Guggenheim retrospective exhibition catalog I Want to Believe. Introduced through a comprehensive map and chronology and encompassing the visual and textual records from over three decades of Cai Guo-Qiang’s career, this book showcases the work of an artist renowned for his unique gunpowder art through his Individual’s Journey Through Western Art History. In a series of exhibitions at major museums and cultural sites around the world, including the Prado Museum, Uffizi Galleries, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, National Archaeological Museum of Naples and Pompeii Archaeological Park, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Cai has engaged in dialogues with periods of Western art history as presented by the institutions. The series also retraces Cai’s expansive journey of homecoming through dialogues with his original passion for painting, the spirit of Chinese culture and his eternal home in the Cosmos.
This publication presents the culmination of Cai's Journey with the exhibition Odyssey and Homecoming at the Palace Museum, the first ever by a contemporary artist, coinciding with the 600th anniversary of the Forbidden City.

In 2019, New York–based Chinese artist Cai-Guo Qiang (born 1957) was invited to create a work of art in the amphitheater of the Pompeii archaeological site. Inspired by the fate of the ancient Roman city, which was buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Cai’s work involved gunpowder, fireworks, an array of artifacts and a vast canvas. The performance culminated in an “excavation” of the resulting debris, which became part of Cai’s exhibition of related works at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

Cai Guo-Qiang and Pompeii: In the Volcano is published to document Cai’s work in Pompeii. The project at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples is part of an ongoing, multiyear series of exhibitions, An Individual’s Journey Through Western Art History. Staging work in Moscow, Madrid, Florence and now Pompeii, Cai juxtaposes his work with the Western art historical canon.

The perspective of one of the most influential contemporary artists on the complex web of conceptual and material connections between China and the Arab world. Saraab (“mirage” in Arabic) is the catalog of Cai Guo-Qiang’s first solo exhibition in the Middle East. It is a journey of personal and artistic discovery that demonstrates the emotional breadth of Cai’s work, from the intimate to the spectacular. Featuring the artist’s characteristic use of symbols and stories about local history and transnational movements, the book is inspired by the multilayered history of the artist’s hometown of Guangzhou, China, and it illuminates the long-standing but little-known relationship between China and the Arab world dating back to the ancient maritime Silk Road. It features conversations between Cai Guo-Qiang and scholars on Sino-Arab history and a monographic essay on the artist by Yuko Hasegawa, as well as images of never-before-published early works.

Cai Guo-Qiang was director of Visual and Special Effects for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In the same year, he was the subject of a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York. In fall 2010, Cai created Odyssey for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. He currently lives and works in New York. Yuko Hasegawa is chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, and prior to that she was chief curator and founding artistic director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (1999–2006).