Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957, Quanzhou, China) was trained in stage design at the Shanghai Theatre Academy in the early 1980s. From December 1986 to September 1995, he sojourned in Japan. Cai has resided and worked in New York since 1995.

Cai has excelled in a broad range of creative mediums, from painting, installation, video art, and performance art, to new technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), NFTs, blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI) in art. Grounded in the conceptual foundations of Eastern philosophy and contemporary social issues, his often site-specific artworks around the world interpret and respond to local culture and history, establishing a dialogue between viewers and the larger universe around them. His famed gunpowder paintings, explosion art, and installations are imbued with a force that transcends the two-dimensional plane to oscillate freely between society and nature.

As of December 2025, Cai has realized over 653 exhibitions and projects on five continents, including approximately 122 solo exhibitions and 73 firework explosion events. Notable international solo exhibitions include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2006); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (retrospective exhibition, 2008); Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow (2017); Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (2017); Uffizi Galleries, Florence, Italy (2018); the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and Archaeological Park of Pompeii, Italy (2019); and the Palace Museum, Beijing (2020). In 2015, Cai realized the explosion event Sky Ladder in his hometown of Quanzhou. The eponymous documentary film, directed by Academy Award winner Kevin MacDonald, was released globally on Netflix.

His most recent projects in 2025 include Interspecies Love Letter, commissioned by the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and The Last Carnival, created for the Centre Pompidou’s closure for renovation in Paris.

Cai has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Golden Lion at the 1999 Venice Biennale, the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2007, and the 2009 Fukuoka Prize. In 2012, he was honored as a Laureate for the prestigious Praemium Imperiale in the painting category. The award recognizes lifetime achievement in the arts across categories not covered by the Nobel Prize. The same year, he was named as one of 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 7th Isamu Noguchi Award in 2020, the Rockefeller 3rd Award in 2022, and the 74th Art Encouragement Prize by Japan’s Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology in 2024.

Cai also served as the Director of Visual Effects and Fireworks for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.