Cai Guo-Qiang has been part of the international contemporary art scene for over two decades. Cai Guo-Qiang has proved that he was a leading and central figure of China’s contemporary art world. He has built his career as a multi-disciplinary artist, complementing his original gunpowder performances and drawings with sculpture and installation.

Born in 1957 in Fujian province, he lived in Japan for nine years before settling in New York in 1995. Here he has had important performances as the opening of MoMa/PS1 in Queens or over Central Park. New York is also the city where Cai Guo-Qiang is presently having a blockbuster retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, the first devoted to a Chinese artist.

As can be seen in his exhibition entitled I Want to Believe, Cai Guo-Qiang has largely redefined the notion of artmaking, which, to some, makes him one of the most innovative artists of his generation.

More recently, Cai Guo-Qiang has been in the headlines because of a record sale of a set of 14 gunpowder drawings that reached US$9.5 million at auction in Hong Kong at the end of 2007, a record for a work of Chinese contemporary art.

exploding cars, 2006

He was also part of the creative team of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games to be held in Beijing this summer – an event awaited by an international audience with great expectations.

Cai Guo-Qiang, Self-Portrait 1985

“It is like making medicine — a little of this, a little of that, watch it and taste it a little and see how it is working. My work is like a dialogue between me and unseen powers, like alchemy.”