Cai Guo-Qiang
Fireflies, 2017-2021 - Downtown Coral Gables
Project Description
When invited to curate and produce Illuminate Coral Gables, Chief curator Lance Fung made two immediate calls: Cai Guo-Qiang and Kiki Smith. Both art luminaries agreed to participate. “Fireflies is one of the most successful and historic public artworks I have been a part of. It is about bringing people together, sharing stories, reinforcing the value of community, all while being a deeply conceptual artwork by embracing different cultures and the actual general public it is meant to serve,” states Fung.
Twenty-seven American-made pedicabs are transformed into kinetic and interactive sculptures through 1000 handmade silk Chinese lanterns and the brilliance of Cai Guo-Qiang. These interactive sculptures are visible in the evening and in all cases do what great art should do – provide an experience. Although the viewer from afar or rider from within may have varying interpretations, Fireflies mai
The true test for success is not the accolades of the art critics but rather the general public who encounter public art. The overwhelming recognition of Fireflies’ uniqueness and accessibility in providing a childlike sense of joy establish this ephemeral experience as the benchmark of what great public art should do.
Cai Guo-Qiang’s Fireflies was commissioned by the Association for Public Art with Fung Collaboratives and was first presented in Philadelphia in 2017. The project was curated by Lance M. Fung for the centennial celebration of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Major support was received from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957, Quanzhou, China) was trained in stage design at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, and his work has since crossed multiple mediums within art including drawing, installation, video, and performance. Cai began to experiment with gunpowder in his hometown Quanzhou, and continued exploring its properties while living in Japan from 1986 to 1995, which led to the development of his signature outdoor explosion events. Drawing upon Eastern philosophy and contemporary social issues as a conceptual basis, his often site-specific artworks respond to culture and history and establish an exchange between viewers and the larger universe around them. His explosion art and installations are imbued with a force that transcends the two-dimensional plane to engage with society and nature.
Cai was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 1999, the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2007, and the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2009. In 2012, he was honored as a Laureate for the prestigious Praemium Imperiale, which recognizes lifetime achievement in the arts across categories not covered by the Nobel Prize. The same year, he was named as one of the five artists to receive the first U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts for his outstanding commitment to international cultural exchange. His recent honors include the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Award in 2015, the Bonnefanten Award for Contemporary Art (BACA), the Japan Foundation Awards, and the Asia Arts Award Honoree in 2016, and the 2020 Isamu Noguchi Award. Cai also served as Director of Visual and Special Effects for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
His many solo exhibitions and projects over the past three decades include Cai Guo-Qiang on the Roof: Transparent Monument at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2006 and his retrospective I Want to Believe at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York in 2008. His solo exhibition Da Vincis do Povo toured to three cities in Brazil in 2013, attracting over one million visitors. The Rio de Janeiro edition was the most visited exhibition by a living artist worldwide that year. In June 2015, Cai created the explosion event Sky Ladder in his hometown Quanzhou. The artwork became the centerpiece of the Netflix documentary Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang, directed by Academy Award winner Kevin Macdonald.
His major projects of recent years include those related to his Individual’s Journey Through Western Art History: In 2017, he realized October at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow and The Spirit of Painting at the Museo del Prado, Madrid. In 2018, his explosion event City of Flowers in the Sky was realized above Piazzale Michelangelo in Florence and marked the opening of his solo exhibition Flora Commedia at the Uffizi Galleries. Solo exhibitions in 2019 include In the Volcano at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, The Transient Landscape at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Cuyahoga River Lightning at the Cleveland Museum of Art. He realized the explosion event Encounter with the Unknown: Cosmos Project for Mexico in 2019.
He has lived and worked in New York since 1995.
Awards
2018 Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, US 2016 Asia Arts Award Honoree, Asia Society’s Asia Arts Game Changers, Hong Kong 2009 20th Fukuoka Prize for Arts and Culture, Fukuoka, Japan
1999 Golden Lion, 48th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
1997 Oribe Award, Gifu, Japan
1999 Golden Lion, 48th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
1997 Oribe Award, Gifu, Japan
1996 P.S.1 The Institute for Contemporary Art: National and International Studio Program, Asian Cultural Council Grant, New York, USA
1995 Japan Cultural Design Prize, Tokyo, Japan
1995 Benesse Prize in conjunction with TransCulture, 46th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
1993 Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, France