Earth Has Its Black Hole Too: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 16, was created during Cai Guo-Qiang’s stay in Japan. During this period, the artist continued to explore the early gunpowder experiments he began in his hometown of Quanzhou, Fujian. Starting by blasting and smoking his oil paintings with gun powder, he gradually shifted to replacing pigment with gunpowder entirely, which became the focus of his work and defined him as the ‘person who paints with gunpowder’. After launching the Project for Extraterrestrials series, Cai Guo-Qiang began using gunpowder on paper to express cosmic themes such as the universe and aliens, the mysterious nature of which lends the instantaneous blast of creation an extremely ceremonial feeling. In addition to paintings, Project for Extraterrestrials also allowed Cai Guo-Qiang to expand the scale and means of blasting, and eventually extend to his famous outdoor blasting plans. Cai Guo-Qiang once said “Project for Extraterrestrials somewhat unifies the worldview and personality I formed as a young person: first, it unifies my concept of space and time, that they are one—the instant of explosion is both space and time. Secondly, it allows me to be an artist who is not in the exhibition hall. I can create on a building, on the ground, and deal with different social and historical themes in a community.”

In 1994, Cai Guo-Qiang made a large-scale blasting work in the Central Park of Hiroshima City titled Earth Has Its Black Hole Too and won the Hiroshima Prize, a major Japanese cultural award. After that, he moved to New York, USA and became a world-renowned contemporary artist developing among different cultures on five continents.

(Edited by Lijie Wang & Miao Zijin)