Cai Guo-Qiang (Season 3) has been awarded the 7th Hiroshima Art Prize, which comes with a solo exhibition at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art. Opening October 25th, the commemorative exhibition focuses on Cai’s activities themed on the destruction of the atomic bomb and subsequent regeneration. The works will be comprised of a massive (4x 45 meters) gunpowder drawing, new large-scale, site-specific installations, and a black fireworks performance that will also open the event.
Established by the city of Hiroshima, Japan in 1989, the Hiroshima Art Prize acknowledges the achievements of artists who have contributed to the peace of humanity within the field of contemporary art, and who through their creative activities “spread the Spirit of Hiroshima,” a message of global peace. Past recipients include Issey Miyake, Robert Rauschenberg, Nancy Spero (Season 4) and Leon Golub, Krzysztof Wodiczko (Season 3), Daniel Libeskind, and Shirin Neshat.
Cai recently served as Director of Visual and Special Effects for the Beijing Olympics opening and closing ceremonies. The Guggenheim Museum in New York held a retrospective of the artist’s works this past spring. In 1994 Cai produced another project in Hiroshima, an outdoor event about requiem and rebirth titled The Earth Has Its Black Hole Too: Project for Extraterrestrials No.16.
For a full program that includes a panel discussion moderated by the exhibition’s curator Yukie Kamiya, please go to the museum website.