Cai Guo-Qiang: Falling back to earth

178 179 2009 For his first retrospective in Taiwan, ‘Hanging Out in the Museum’ at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Cai ships a large slab of granite sculpted into the shape of the Taiwan Strait across the ocean from his home town, Quanzhou, one of the closest mainland Chinese cities to Taiwan. 2010 For the exhibition ‘Cai Guo-Qiang: Peasant Da Vincis’ at Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum, Cai presents his personal collection of homemade flying machines, submarines and robots crafted by rural Chinese inventors, acknowledging Chinese social issues, and plays on the slogan of the concurrent Shanghai World Expo, ‘Better City, Better Life’ by devising his own slogan, ‘Peasants – Making a better city, a better life’. ‘I have been gathering peasants’ dreams’, he notes, ‘and with these dreams I see myself: I am ‘a child of this land, I am a son of peasants — no — I am a peasant’. 2011 For his solo exhibition at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Cai explores the historical relationships between the Arab world and the Muslim descendents in his home town of Quanzhou, which was once the largest seaport in the world, as well as the starting point of the maritime Silk Road. Through the works, he attempts to offer a spiritual homecoming for the Muslim descendents who settled in Quanzhou over the past millenium. Endless 2011 / Installation view, ‘Cai Guo-Qiang: Saraab’, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar, 2011 / Three wooden boats, pool of water, wave-making machine, automatic fog machine / Collection: Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar / Photograph: Hiro Ihara / Courtesy: Cai Studio 2012 Cai’s exploration of monumental indoor installations continues as he suspends a 36-metre-long ‘field’ of crop circles from the ceiling of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, for the exhibition ‘Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder’. He is also awarded the prestigious Praemium Imperiale award for painting by the Japanese imperial family. In December, Cai is honoured with a Medal of the Arts from the US State Department, presented by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. 2013 Cai returns to Iwaki in Fukushima Prefecture for the opening of the SMoCA (Snake Museum of Contemporary Art) , whose 99-metre-long serpentine structure he designed. The building is made using timber from the region that cannot be sold elsewhere as a result of the radiation contamination after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Cai adds a Children Da Vincis component to the ‘Cai Guo-Qiang: Da Vincis do Povo’ exhibition tour of Brazil, and creates an explosion event for Nuit Blanche, an all-night citywide contemporary art event organised by the City of Paris. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton awarding Cai Guo-Qiang the US Department of State Medal of Arts, Washington DC, 2012 / Photograph: Wen-You Cai / Courtesy: Cai Studio Crop Circles 2012 / Installation view, ‘Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder’, The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, Los Angeles, 2012 / Photograph: Joshua White. Courtesy: The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Fairytale 2010 / Installation view, ‘Peasant Da Vincis’, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, 2010 / Grass lawn, 60 live birds, wild flowering plants, wooden aeroplane by Chen Zongzhi, Wang Qiang No.1 by Wang Qiang, submarines by Li Yuming, helicopters by Xu Bin and Wu Shuzhai, flying saucers by Du Wenda / Collection: The artist / Photograph: Lin Yi / Courtesy: Cai Studio Installation view of ‘Cai Guo-Qiang: Da Vincis do Povo’, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, 2013 / Photograph: Joana França One Night Stand: Explosion Event for Nuit Blanche , realised on the Seine between Pont Royal and Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor, in front of Musée d’Orsay on 5 October, 2013 / Photograph: Thierry Nava / Courtesy: Cai Studio Cai Guo-Qiang receives the Praemium Imperiale Award, Tokyo 2012 Photograph: Liu Heung Shing © 2012 Cai ends the year at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art with ‘Falling Back to Earth’, his first solo exhibition in Australia. It features works inspired by the Queensland landscape, including his ambitious new installations Heritage and Eucalyptus .