Cai Guo Qiang

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1956 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province China. He studied stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute from 1981 to 1985. Accomplished in a variety of media, Cai began using gunpowder in his work to foster spontaneity and confront the controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China. These projects, while poetic and ambitious in their core, aim to establish an exchange between viewers and the larger universe. For his work, Cai draws on a wide variety of materials, symbols, narratives and traditions—elements of feng shui, Chinese medicine and philosophy, images of dragons and tigers, roller coasters, computers, vending machines, and gun powder.