The 7th Hiroshima Art Prize
Cai Guo-Qiang
October 25 – January 12, 2009
1-1 Hijiyama Koen, Minami-Ku, Hiroshima, JAPAN
www.hcmca.cf.city.hiroshima.jp/
Exhibition Outline
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 aim to spread the “Spirit of Hiroshima,” which seeks everlasting world peace, to the world at large. Cai Guo-Qiang (born 1957 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China; currently lives in New York) has been selected as the winner of the 7th Hiroshima Art Prize and the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art will organize a solo exhibition of the artist’s work from October 25, 2008 to January 12, 2009.
Cai, who served as Director of Visual and Special Effects for the Beijing Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, is known for his explosion events, gunpowder drawings and large-scale, site-specific installations. He has created a body of work that is not only based on a unique vision of the universe rooted in traditional Chinese culture and thought, but also offers a penetrating view of human history and civilization. In his 1994 outdoor project in Hiroshima titled The Earth Has Its Black Hole Too: Project for Extraterrestrials No.16, both a celebration of the rebirth of Hiroshima and a requiem, Cai applied his personal methodology of using gunpowder to raise questions regarding the historical significance of Hiroshima. The artist’s interest in these historical nuances led to his 1996 project implemented across the United States titled The Century with Mushroom Clouds: Project for the 20th Century, and this interest has continued to have a large influence on Cai’s art ever since.
The commemorative exhibition focuses on Cai’s dynamic artistic activities that are themed on the destruction of the A-bomb and the restoration of new life. New large-scale, site-specific installations will be produced specially for the exhibition along with a 4 by 45 meter gunpowder drawing. An explosion event involving black fireworks will also be executed on the opening day.
Related Events
[Outdoor project] Explosion Event | Black Fireworks
October 25 | 13:00 (Rain date | October 26 | 12:00)
Venue | Motomachi Riverside Park
[Artist Talk with Akira Asada, Dean of the Graduate School, Kyoto University of Art and Design]
October 26 | 13:00
Venue | Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art
Hiroshima Art Prize
Past recipients (of Prizes 1 through 6 respectively): Issey Miyake (fashion), Robert Rauschenberg (fine art), Nancy Spero and Leon Golub (fine art), Krzysztof Wodiczko(fine art), Daniel Libeskind (architecture), and Shirin Neshat (fine art).
[Contact]
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (Hiroshima MOCA)
1-1 Hijiyama Koen, Minami-Ku,
Hiroshima, 732-0815 JAPAN
Tel: +81 (0)82 264 1121
Fax: +81 (0)82 264 1198
www.hcmca.cf.city.hiroshima.jp/
hcmca@hcmca.cf.city.hiroshima.jp
