Born in 1957 – the son of a historian and landscape painter in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province – Cai Guo-Qiang (pronounced sigh gwo chang) developed a desire to become an artist at an early age. As a teenager, he was absorbed in the martial arts and even acted in some kung-fu movies. Educated in the traditions of Western art, Cai first encountered Western contemporary art as China entered an era of intense social change. Not able to find a school offering classes in contemporary art, he studied stage design from 1981 to 1985 at the Shanghai Drama Institute. He also experimented with gunpowder to foster spontaneity and to confront the suppression that he felt from his controlled artistic and social climate. At the end of 1986, when he moved to Japan, he began to explore the properties of gunpowder in his drawings, an inquiry that led to experimentation with explosives on a massive scale, and the development of explosion events, exemplified in his renowned series Projects for Extraterrestrials.

Cai achieved international prominence while living in Japan, and his works began to be shown widely around the world. His approach draws on a wide variety of symbols, narratives, traditions, and materials, such as astrophysics, feng shui, Chinese medicine, dragons, roller coasters, computers, vending machines, and gunpowder. Through the years, Cai has formulated collaborative relationships with specialists and experts from various disciplines, including scientists, doctors, fengshui masters, designers, architects, choreographers and composers such as Issey Miyake, Rapheal Vionly, Zaha Hadid and Tan Dun. Cai moved from Japan to the United States in 1995, and now lives in New York with his family.

Among many of the artist’s solo exhibitions and projects are Cai Guo-Qiang: Inopportune, Mass MoCA, North Adams, 2005; Cai Guo-Qiang: Unlucky Year and Traveler, Freer & Sackler Gallery and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, 2004; Light Cycle: Explosion Project for Central Park, Creative Time, New York, 2003; Ye Gong Hao Long: Explosion Project for Tate Modern, Tate Modern, London, 2003; Transient Rainbow, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002; Cai Guo-Qiang, Shanghai Art Museum, 2002; APEC Cityscape Fireworks Show, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, Shanghai, 2001; Cai Guo-Qiang: An Arbitrary History, Musee d'Art Contemporain, Lyon, 2001; Cultural Melting Bath: Projects for the 20th Century, Queens Museum of Art, New York, 1997; Flying Dragon in the Heavens, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humblebaek, 1997; The Earth Has Its Black Hole Too, Hiroshima, 1994; and Project to Extend the Great Wall of China by 10,000 Meters, Jiayuguan City, 1993. The Everything Is Museum series, in which the Cai Guo-Qiang turns alternative spaces into exhibition sites where contemporary art and culture meet the local communities, includes DMoCA: Dragon Museum of Contemporary Art, Niigata, Japan; UMoCA: Under Museum of Contemporary Art, Colla di Val d’Elsa, Italy and, most recently, BMoCA: Bunker Museum of Contemporary Art: 18 Solo Exhibitions, which was curated by the artist and opened in September 2004 in Kinmen (Quemoy), Taiwan. Cai Quo-Qiang also curated the inaugural China pavilion at the 51st Biennale di Venezia, 2005.

Among the many honors bestowed upon Cai Guo-Qiang are the prestigious Golden Lion Award at the 48th Biennale di Venezia and the 2001 CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts. He was also selected as a finalist for the 1996 Hugo Boss Prize.