Recent Projects
Radiance of Spring: Sky Painting for Normandie Impressionniste
May 31, 2026
On May 31, 2026, at 6:30 PM, Cai Guo-Qiang realized the daytime fireworks Radiance of Spring over the Seine River in Vernon, France. More than 15,000 local residents, members of the media, international guests, and friends of the art world gathered along the riverbanks and on the Clemenceau Bridge to witness the event.
Commissioned by Normandie Impressioniste, Radiance of Spring took the sky as its canvas, responding to and commemorating the centenary of Claude Monet’s passing in the “Valley of Impressionism.”
Cai Guo-Qiang: Radiance of Spring
Mont Saint-Michel Abbey
May 29 – September 27, 2026
On May 29, Cai Guo-Qiang’s solo exhibition Radiance of Spring opened to the public at the Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey, a UNESCO World Heritage site in France.
Radiance of Spring coincides with the centenary of the passing of Claude Monet. Commissioned by Normandie Impressionniste 2026, the exhibition is curated by Philippe Platel, the festival’s General and Artistic Director.
The Last Carnival
October 22, 2025
On October 22, Cai Guo-Qiang and his custom AI model cAI™ realized The Last Carnival, a daytime fireworks performance marking the Centre Pompidou’s closure for renovation in Paris.
For nearly twenty minutes, the façade became a vast, three-dimensional canvas of fireworks. Structured in three acts, The Banquet, The Dawn of AI, and The Last Carnival, the work functioned both as a farewell to the Pompidou’s first major closure since its opening in 1977 and as an explosion into the future.
Curated by Jérôme Neutres and narrated by cAI™, it explored anthropocentric art history and interspecies dialogue in the age of artificial intelligence.
cAI™ Lab 2.0 – Is It Your Gaze That Meets Mine, or Mine That Seeks Yours?
Fantasy Box, MGM MACAU
July 20 – September 22, 2025
On the evening of July 19, Cai Guo-Qiang, together with his custom-developed AI model cAI™, unveiled a new exhibition titled cAI™ Lab 2.0—Is It Your Gaze that Meets Mine, or Mine that Seeks Yours? in Fantasy Box, a multifunctional black box space at MGM Macau. Presented as a special program of Art Macau: Macau International Art Biennale 2025, the exhibition is organized by MGM.
Interspecies Love Letter: cAI™ Lab
Skylight Pavilion of the Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.
March 28 – April 13, 2025
On March 29th, along the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., Cai Guo-Qiang collaborated with his custom AI model, cAI™ (pronounced “AI Cai”), to realize Interspecies Love Letter: Sky Painting for EARTH to SPACE. Coinciding with this performance, Cai transformed the Kennedy Center’s Skylight Pavilion into an immersive and multidimensional exhibition, titled cAI™ Lab.
Interspecies Love Letter: Sky Painting for EARTH to SPACE
March 29, 2025
On March 29th at 9pm, a gentle spring breeze brushed along the banks of the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. Over ten thousand spectators gathered from around the world at the terrace and riverfront plaza of the Kennedy Center to witness Interspecies Love Letter: Sky Painting for EARTH to SPACE—a large-scale outdoor multimedia interactive performance.
Commissioned by the Kennedy Center to kick off the EARTH to SPACE: Arts Breaking the Sky festival, the artwork was co-created by Cai Guo-Qiang and his custom AI model, cAI™ (pronounced “AI Cai”).
Red Sails: Explosion Event for the Groundbreaking Ceremony of Quanzhou Museum of Contemporary Art (QMoCA)
December 8, 2024
On December 8 at 4:35 p.m., howling winds and dark clouds loomed over Beiwujiao Bay in Quanzhou. Amidst the strong winds, about 5,000 spectators and members of the media eagerly awaited Cai Guo-Qiang’s daytime fireworks and drone performance Red Sails: Explosion Event for the Groundbreaking Ceremony of Quanzhou Museum of Contemporary Art (QMoCA).
cAI™: Soul Scan
Macau Contemporary Art Center – Navy Yard No. 1
November 23, 2024–June 1, 2025
On November 24, 2024, cAI™, the AI model custom developed by contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang and his team, opened its debut solo exhibition entitled cAI™: Soul Scan located at Navy Yard No.1 and organized by MGM.
Cai Guo-Qiang: A Material Odyssey
September 17, 2024–June 15, 2025
On September 17, Cai Guo-Qiang’s solo exhibition, A Material Odyssey, organized by Getty and the University of Southern California (USC) at the USC Pacific Asia Museum (PAM), opened to the public. The exhibition is rooted in the Getty Conservation Institute and the Getty Research Institute’s research, which began in 2016, on the materials and creative processes in Cai’s art. It traces Cai’s 40-year-long dialogue with gunpowder, including his latest painting explorations with AI. The exhibition features approximately 48 artworks and groups of works, along with a wealth of scientific research, filling almost all the galleries at PAM.
WE ARE: Explosion Event for PST ART
September 15, 2024
At 5:53 PM on September 15, under the last rays of daylight, around 4,500 spectators and nearly a hundred media representatives awaited on the field of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the daytime fireworks WE ARE: Explosion Event for PST ART, created by Cai Guo-Qiang in collaboration with his custom-developed AI model, cAI™.
In just over 30 minutes, five acts of fireworks spanned the 360-degree audience seats, the Olympic cauldron, and the airspace above the stadium. Utilizing approximately 50,000 daytime fireworks, 1,300 drones, nearly 4,000 bamboo poles, and close to 10,000 airbursts, WE ARE created a grand spectacle for AI’s dimensionality reduction to “reveal heavenly secrets,” and attempted to convey the response to the question “What is the fate of humanity with AI?” in a language comprehensible to humans. WE ARE was commissioned and presented by the Getty, in collaboration with the University of Southern California.
This marks Cai’s return to Los Angeles since his solo exhibition and explosion event at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 2012. As the opening ceremony of this year’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide, WE ARE is also the first large-scale daytime fireworks and drone fireworks performance in U.S. history.
cAI™: An Artificial Intelligence Project
Originating from Cai Guo-Qiang’s artificial intelligence research that began in 2017, cAI™ (pronounced “AI Cai”) is a multi-modal AI model custom built by Cai and the studio, based on Cai’s long-established artistic philosophy and methodology.
cAI™ deep-learns from Cai’s artworks, archives, and areas of interest. It also emulates contemporary and historical figures Cai admires, developing distinct personas who can debate with each other, thereby forming an independent and free community.
cAI™ is not only an artwork of Cai’s, but also his partner for dialogue and collaboration. In the future, it may even create art by itself. cAI™ has launched and realized a series of important projects, through the commissions of top international art institutions/brands.