Cai Guo-Qiang: Falling back to earth

52 53 Nine Dragon Wall (Drawing for Dragon or Rainbow Serpent: A Myth Glorified or Feared: Project for Extraterrestrials No.28) 1996 Spent gunpowder and Indian ink on Japanese paper Nine sheets: 300 x 1800cm (overall) Purchased 1996 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery The exhibition ‘Falling Back to Earth’ continues and deepens Cai’s connections with Australia, which began in 1996 when he first worked with the Queensland Art Gallery for ‘The Second Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’. His gunpowder project for the show, titled Dragon or Rainbow Serpent: A Myth Glorified or Feared: Project for Extraterrestrials No.28 , was to culminate on the Brisbane River, although the event was cancelled due to the fireworks being destroyed in an accident at the factory several days before. The complementary gunpowder drawing was undertaken, however, and comprises nine large scrolls marked with sinuous calligraphic burns that allude to the Dhuwa moeity figure of the Rainbow Serpent and the Chinese figure of the dragon. In referencing these two legendary forces, Cai aimed to ‘create a transcultural, site-specific work which draws upon the ancient and modern, the Chinese and the Indigenous Australian, the spirits and humanity, the sky and the earth, the land and the water’. 15 The following Triennial in 1999 featured Bridge Crossing , a bamboo bridge across the Gallery’s Watermall, designed by Cai to form a physical and symbolic link across space and time (the exhibition, subtitled ‘Beyond the Future’, spanned the turn of the millennium). 16 Cai’s study of different environments across Queensland to develop ‘Falling Back to Earth’ closes a circle. It presents a new focus, while making strong links with the artist’s past projects in Brisbane in 1996 and 1999. 17 As in these works, Heritage is inspired by water, the element that in its abundance keeps Australia separated from the rest of the world, yet is so scarce on this driest of continents. The central feature of Heritage is the lake, a symbolic source of sustenance and harmony. Its reflectivity and round shape also concentrates and connects the energies in the room; Cai uses the symbolism of circles regularly in his works, both in the air and on the ground — in Chinese cosmology, the sky is round, and the circle represents limitlessness and completeness. 18 The horizontal ring of 99 animals in Heritage is echoed in the vertical loop of 99 wolves in Head On , although the former is a fragile circle that looks like it might break at any moment, while the latter is a frantically spinning cycle of endless repetition. The water in Heritage , like the tree in Eucalyptus , focuses our attention. While both works are at a gigantic scale, they are also condensed, powerful, yet simple ideas enacted as a spectacular experience. In this way, they are linked to Cai’s gunpowder works and firework displays, but ‘Falling Back to Earth’ registers a pause in time — a hiatus — rather than staging a momentary event. Throughout the exhibition, Cai has created points where viewers are encouraged to linger and contemplate. At the far end of the gallery, where a large window faces the Brisbane River, is a space for visitors to sit together and drink tea from Cai’s home province of Fujian. It includes furniture cut from a similar tree to Eucalyptus : the symbolic tree is now transformed into functional wood. Tea Pavilion will also feature regular Chinese tea ceremonies, rituals that traditionally promote harmony with nature. In this space Cai appears to gesture towards where we might go from here, how we could escape the repetitive cycle of destructive behaviour, and where we may find that magical idyll, which looks something like home, perhaps as Tao Yuanming described it: There the trees, happy of heart, grow marvelously green, and spring water gushes forth with a gurgling sound. I admire how things grow and prosper according to their seasons, and feel that thus, too, shall my life go its round. 19 Endnotes 1 Murray Bail, Eucalyptus , Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1998, p.15. 2 Cai Guo-Qiang, quoted in Dana Friis-Hansen, ‘Towards a new methodology in art’ in Cai Guo-Qiang , eds Dana Friis-Hansen, Octavio Zaya and Serazawa Takashi, Phaidon, London, 2002, p.48. 3 John Clarke, ‘Mysticism made visible: Taoist spirituality and the art of landscape painting’, GreenSpirit , Spring 2000, p.5. 4 Cai Guo-Qiang, from unpublished chronology supplied by Cai Studio, 2013. 5 Wu Hung, ‘The dialectics of art and the event’, in Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe [exhibition catalogue], Thomas Krens and Alexandra Munroe (curators), Guggenheim Museum Publications, New York, 2008, p.46. 6 For a discussion of Joseph Beuys in relation to Cai’s work, see David Elliott, ‘Between heaven and earth in the art of Cai Guo-Qiang’, in Cai Guo-Qiang: Fallen Blossoms [exhibition catalogue], ed. Amy Wilkins, Philadelphia Museum of Art / Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, 2010, pp.43–4. 7 Michelle Yun, ‘ Head On 2006’, in Cai Guo Qiang: I Want to Believe , p.226. 8 Cai Guo-Qiang, interviewed by Jonathan Shaughnessy, ‘Cai’s tour: An interview with Cai Guo-Qiang about long scroll’, in Pierre Theberge (curator), Cai Guo-Qiang: Long Scroll [exhibition catalogue], National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2006, pp.66–7. 9 Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power , trans. Carol Stewart, Penguin Books, London, 1992 (originally published 1960), p.21. 10 See interview with Cai Guo-Qiang at Guggenheim Bilbao, <http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=5rJcem92ns0>, viewed 28 July 2013. 11 See Asada Akira’s interview with Cai Guo-Qiang, ‘Art: The critical point of creativity and destruction’, in The 7th Hiroshima Art Prize: Cai Guo-Qiang , The Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, 2008, p.40. 12 The 7th Hiroshima Art Prize: Cai Guo-Qiang , pp.40–1. 13 Cai Guo-Qiang, conversation with the author, 18 July 2013. All subsequent comments by Cai on the works in ‘Falling Back to Earth’ come from this conversation. 14 Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods , Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1995 (originally published 1854), p.123. 15 Dana Friis-Hansen, ‘Cai Guo-Qiang’, in eds Caroline Turner and Rhana Devenport, The Second Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art [exhibition catalogue], Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1996, p.59. 16 For more information on this project, see Barbara London, ‘Cai Guo-Qiang: Chinese tradition in a jogging suit’, in Beyond the Future: The Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art [exhibition catalogue], Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, 1996, p.196. The related event planned for the Brisbane River, Blue Dragon , was not fully realised due to its 99 small aluminium boats sinking before they reached their destination. 17 See Suhanya Raffel’s essay in this catalogue, pp.56–65. 18 See Arthur Lubow, ‘The pyrotechnic imagination’, New York Times Magazine , 17 February 2008, pp.36–7, for a discussion of the use of circles in Cai’s work. 19 Tao Yuanming, ‘Ah, homeward bound I go!’ (405 CE), trans. Lin Yutang, published in The Importance of Living , Heinemann, London, 1938.