Cai Guo-Qiang is unlike any other artist on the planet: after all, he did tell me that he was an extraterrestrial when he gave a rare public interview about his work at the British Museum last September. His visit then was to install his first London project, Money Net, a vast sculptural web of gunpowder-fuse suspended above the courtyard of the Royal Academy, which was detonated to mark the opening of The Galleries Show. His latest work for Tate Modern also involved gunpowder and was far more ambitious: 6,000 metres of fuse, 25 kilos of black and metallic powders, and 200 shells of three-inch solutes. In the early evening of Friday 31 January, all this metamorphosed into a dragon of fire, travelling at great speed along the Thames, passing over the Millennium Bridge, making its way across the façade of Tate Modern and snaking skywards on its distinctive chimney. The event didn’t go according to plan due to a break in the fuse on the water, while a computer hindered the explosive finale. But risk is central to much of Cai’s work, where the process is the real goal rather than the end result and the work has a life of its own. Although this was an ephemeral work of barely a minute’s duration, Cai feels it will have lasting power, forever etched into the memories of a large audience, expressing the energy that flows between spectator and artwork.
The title of the Tate commission Ye Gong
Hao Long (literally, ‘Mr. Ye who loves the dragon’) comes from an ancient
tale about a man named Ye Gong who loved a dragon, which he painted at every
opportunity. When the dragon heard about this, it went to Ye Gong’s mansion
and put its head through the window. But when Ye Gong saw it, he was so
frightened that he ran for his life. Cai often uses or plays on the
significance of the Oriental dragon for the European mind and this latest
project has parallels with his 1999 work, Dragon Sight Sees Vienna. Here,
Cai installed 15 kilos of gunpowder and 600 metres of fuse on the arms of
four cranes hovering over the construction site of Vienna’s Museumsquartier.
Upon detonation, the fiery outline of a dragon shone fleetingly in the sky.
Since the earliest times in China the dragon has symbolised nature’s power
over the earth and universe. In one of his early unrealised works, Ascending
Dragon (1990), Cai refers to the dragon as ‘the incarnation of man’s dream
to fly freely beyond physical limitations. For a few fleeting seconds of the
explosion this undulating dragon ascends high in the sky from the rock
slope, carrying the hope of contact between man and minds from beyond. It
represents the universal human spirit, which seeks return and embraces the
universe.’ Ascending Dragon is the second in his series of Projects for
Extraterrestrials which he began in 1989, so called because they are
intended to be visible from outer space. Probably the most celebrated of
these works is number ten in the series, Project to extend the Great Wall of
China by 10,000 metres (1993). Starting from the Great Wall’s western
extremity, gunpowder fuses were laid out for a length of ten kilometres into
the Gobi Desert, then detonated. It has been claimed that the Great Wall is
the only man-made structure visible from the moon, so maybe Cai’s extension
could indeed be viewed by alien life-forms. According to the artist, ‘The
moment we connect with the universe, we become extraterrestrials.’
His work is rooted in nature’s power and energy, its accidental and chaotic quality, and the opposing dynamics of creation and destruction. Growing up in Quanzhou in China’s Fujian Province, the sound and sight of the explosions of the daily bombardment of his city from mainland Taiwan, then at war with China, had a lasting effect on him. His birthplace is also famous for the manufacture of fireworks. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that he has gone on to create grandiose public projects involving complex pyrotechnics, like the APEC Cityscape, Shanghai (2001) and Transient Rainbow (2002), the latter commemorating the move of MoMA from Manhattan to Queens. He is fascinated with gunpowder’s properties of fire, speed and light, and his inspiration is taken from many different creation stories: from the primaeval fireball proposed by Chinese mythology to more modern accounts like the Big Bang or Chaos Theory. In Projects for the 20th Century: The Century with Mushroom Clouds (1996) he created a series of less public performances, exploring the image of the nuclear explosion as a monumental symbol of man’s self-destructive nature. He used a small hand-held gunpowder device to create A-bomb-like mushroom clouds at various locations, including, prophetically, the World Trade Center. While many of his works have parallels with performance art – they rely on interaction with the viewer and are ephemeral – they’re all meticulously documented by photography and video. Also central to his working practice are his drawings, achieved through the skilfully controlled ignition of gunpowder on paper which he then annotates with writings in Chinese ink. As a prelude to the main Tate event, Cai ‘performed’ one of these special project drawings in the Turbine Hall before a large audience.
The Tate Modern commission relates to a series of major projects which are site-specific to the architecture and functions of museums. Perhaps the most spectacular example was his No Destruction, No Construction: Bombing the Taiwan Museum of Art, which initiated the renovation of the ten-year-old museum in 1998. Here, Cai used gunpowder bombs that exploded into the form of a fire dragon which roamed inside and outside the museum, finally coiling itself around the two entrance pillars, etching its form into them with fire to become part of the museum’s permanent collection. To Cai, fire represents a means of cleansing and re-animating the museum with fresh and powerful energy.
In the same spirit, Spider Web is a project he has proposed to the British Museum as an event to coincide with their 250-year anniversary celebrations later this year. This would consist of a network of 1,000 metres of gunpowder fuse woven into the form of a vast spider web stretched across the museum’s famous façade, to be detonated in a spectacle lasting a mere six seconds. The Spider Web echoes the new dome over the Great Court, and according to Cai can also be ‘a metaphor for the British Museum’s collection by casting its web into world culture, showing us the intricate connections between all great civilisations.’
In spite of his unique approach, Cai is an artist very much in tune with the spirit of our times. While clearly drawing on his own cultural traditions, he has developed a rare ability to communicate more universal, human aspirations through his work. His practice is not based around his locality and he is essentially nomadic, having left his native China to live in Japan and then New York.
The Tate Modern commission is a definitive work combining the key elements of Cai’s repertoire: fire and water, museum and dragon. The dragon is an image of power and prosperity in the East, while in the West it is equated more with destructive force: for over a century there has been a lingering fear of what will happen when the sleeping dragon awakes. Once an imperial emblem, in recent years the dragon has become more of a commercial icon as the West becomes increasingly aware of the rise of the Chinese economy and, in particular, the exciting new metropolis of Shanghai. The spectator was therefore left to contemplate the significance of the fleeting image of the fire dragon against the London skyline on the eve of Chinese New Year.
James Putnam is an independent curator and writer, and runs the Contemporary
Arts and Cultures Programme at the British Museum
Cai Guo-Qiang, Ye Gong Hao Long: Explosion Project for Tate Modern, London.
Photo: Hiro Ihara