Cai Guo-Qiang

Why you should listen

Cai Guo-Qiang has worked in a wide range of mediums, including painting, installation art, video art and performance art, but he is probably best known for his works with gunpowder and fireworks. He orchestrated the pyrotechnic "explosion event" Sky Ladder in his hometown of Quanzhou in Fujian, China, in 2015, which became the subject of an eponymous Netflix documentary. Cai has held solo exhibitions in major art museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Prado Museum in Madrid and the Uffizi Galleries in Florence. He served as director of visual effects and fireworks for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 and 2022 Beijing Olympics and has won numerous awards including the John D. Rockefeller III Award in 2022. His latest works explore the possibilities of artificial intelligence, including a custom-built multimodal AI model.