Profile | Who is Cai Guo-qiang, and will the artist’s reputation survive recent controversies?

The Chinese artist, known for setting his gunpowder art alight, has stunned many with his work but has also drawn criticism over the years

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Published: 7:15am, 30 Oct 2025Updated: 8:30am, 30 Oct 2025

Multicoloured fireworks, arranged in a meandering line that resembled a dragon crawling along a pastoral mountain ridge, exploded at the foot of the Himalayas in September.

Cai Guo-qiang, the 67-year-old Chinese artist behind the spectacle, has long been a global heavyweight in the contemporary arts. For decades, the arsonist-artist best known for setting his work alight was deemed to have perfected the delicate art of maintaining official approval in both the West and mainland China.

This ability to transcend cultural and geographic boundaries has seen his work acquired by the most prestigious museums in the West. He was the visual and special effects director for the opening and closing ceremonies at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and the first contemporary artist to hold a solo exhibition at Beijing’s Palace Museum in 2020.

The project in Gyantse county, under the administration of Shigatse in China’s Tibet autonomous region, however, has singed that carefully maintained reputation.

The high-altitude firework display, titled Rising Dragon and sponsored by outdoor apparel brand Arc’teryx, sparked complaints over environmental damage, given the plateau’s fragile ecosystem.

Cai and Arc’teryx were fined by the local government, and Tibetan activists staged a protest outside the Centre Pompidou art space in Paris, calling the work an act of “cultural violence”.

Fireworks explode over the skyline during a show by Cai Guo-qiang titled City of Flowers in the Sky, in Florence, Italy, in November 2018. Photo: ANSA via AP

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