Cai Guo-Qiang: Falling back to earth

64 65 Head On 2006 Installation view, ‘Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want To Believe’, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2009 Commissioned by Deutsche Bank AG Collection: Deutsche Bank Photograph: Erika Barahona-Ede ©FMGBGuggenheim Bilbao Museoa, 2009 Heritage , however, offers something else entirely. The work consists of a shallow blue pool of water from which 99 replicas of animals from around the globe stoop to drink. A veritable Noah’s Ark, where kangaroos, zebras, tigers, gazelles, cougars, horses, monkeys and an elephant, among others, gather in the one place where violence is held at bay and survival is paramount; it is around this pool of water that hunter and the hunted gather together to drink water, a vital element that sustains life. In Heritage the animals act as an allegory for the bridging of cultures, and for the bringing together of the creative and destructive forces that beat within and between them. Balance is absolute — fragile, tenuous, essential. Heritage aches with the much-eroded principles of trust, truce and hope. Cai has consistently drawn attention to the big questions that we face in our time through the making of compelling artworks inspired by culture, stories and images that belong to place. He spent considerable time here in Australia, as part of his site visits in the development of ‘Falling Back to Earth’. During this time he observed the diversity of Australian society, while being attentive to local debates around migration policy and the importance of the history of First Nation peoples within the broader global fallout due to war and refuge. Just as in 1996 — when he made Dragon or Rainbow Serpent: A Myth Glorified or Feared: Project for Extraterrestrials No.28, inspired by the Brisbane River and the creative and destructive power of water — has Cai returned once again to water’s emblematic potential to look at another myth that must be glorified or feared? This emotional shock is mirrored in Head On , where 99 life-size replicas of wolves appear to bound across the gallery as a pack before leaping in an arc, only to smash against a transparent barrier. The pathos inherent in Head On is insinuated in this invisible wall. Again conceived for the Guggenheim in Berlin, the work recalls that city’s specific history of Nazism and the subsequent construction and destruction of the Berlin Wall. It also echoes familiar, universal anxieties: of invasion and contagion, of border control and fear of outsiders, notions that continue to persist across national and cultural borders. As Harrison aptly observes: What is it about the times that render us so easily terrified? What is the deeper source of our perturbation, figured here in dream-like images? It is the age itself that terrifies us. It is not because there are terrorists that we live in terrifying age. It is because we live in a terrifying age that terrorism can wreak havoc with our insecurities. 14 Endnotes 1 Cai Guo-Qiang, quoted in Octavio Zaya, ‘Octavio Zaya in conversation with Cai Guo-Qiang’, in Cai Guo-Qiang , eds Dana Friis-Hansen, Octavio Zaya and Serizawa Takashi, Phaidon, London, 2002, p.22. 2 Cai Guo-Qiang, quoted in Barbara Pollack, ‘Under destruction’, ARTnews , vol.111, no.6, June 2012, p.65. 3 See Alexandra Munroe’s analysis of Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard , Cai’s Golden Lion award-winning installation for the 1999 Venice Biennale, in Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe [exhibition catalogue], Guggenheim Museum Publications, New York, 2008, pp.28–9. 4 Friis-Hansen, Zaya and Serizawa, p.10. 5 Lee Ufan, The Art of Encounter , trans. Stanley N Anderson, Lisson Gallery, London, 2004, p.159. 6 Jeffrey Deitch and Rebecca Morse (eds), Cai Guo-Qiang: Ladder to the Sky [exhibition catalogue], Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Prestel Verlag, Munich, 2012, p.110. 7 Friis-Hansen, Zaya and Serizawa, p.17. 8 Cai Guo-Qiang was present at the fireworks factory when the accident and resulting fire occurred. He writes about this incident, as well as another Brisbane River work that was thwarted by unforeseen circumstances three years later (at the ‘Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’) in the text ‘Foolish man and his mountain’, at <http:// caiguoqiang.com/writings-artist/> , viewed July 2013. Cai Ruiqin Painting of One Hundred Tigers (detail) 1993 Handscroll, ink on paper, mounted on silk 45.6 x 670cm Collection: The artist Photograph: Jung Kim. Courtesy: Cai Studio 9 The last Emperor of China was Puyi (1906–67), whose imperial regime was overthrown in the revolution of 1911, although his abdication was not formalised till 1912. From 1934 to 1945 he was the puppet ruler of Manchuria under the Japanese. The People’s Republic of China was established in 1949 under the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong. Mao’s Cultural Revolution took place during the last decade of his power, 1966–76, purportedly to renew the spirit of the Communist revolution. 10 For an extended history of the use of the dragon in China see Geremie R Barmé, ‘Draco volans est in coelo: Flying dragon in the sky’, in Cai Guo-Qiang: Flying Dragon in the Heavens [exhibition catalogue], Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, 1997, unpaginated. 11 Howard Morphy, Aboriginal Art , Phaidon, London, 1998, pp.107–8. 12 It must also be noted that Cai and his family have lived in New York since 1995, and that his family were at home in lower Manhattan on the morning of 11 September 2001. See Calvin Tomkins, ‘Light show rocket’s red glare’, The New Yorker , 15 September 2003, p.40. 13 Robert Pogue Harrison, ‘Of terror and tigers: Reflections on Cai Guo-Qiang’s Inopportune ’ in Cai Guo-Qiang: Inopportune [exhibition catalogue], Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, 2005, p.28. 14 Cai Guo-Qiang: Inopportune , p.30.