Mathaf to explore historical and contemporary links across asia with the exhibition Cai Guo-Qiang: Saraab

on view December 5, 2011 May 26, 2012 in Doha, Qatar opening includes a signature large-scale daytime explosion event Doha, September 21, 2011: Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art will break new ground this December when it opens its first single-artist exhibition, Cai Guo-Qiang: Saraab. Featuring commissioned work created in dialogue with Doha by renowned artist Cai Guo-Qiang, the exhibition continues Mathafs commitment to presenting an Arab perspective on modern and contemporary art as it turns eastward to consider dynamics across Asia for the first time. Presenting more than 50 works by one of the most influential contemporary artists on the international art scene, Saraab (mirage in Arabic) is Cai Guo-Qiangs first solo exhibition in the Middle East. The show is a journey of personal and artistic discovery that demonstrates the emotional breadth of Cais work, from the intimate to the spectacular. Saraab is inspired by the multi-layered history of the artists hometown of Quanzhou, China, and will illuminate the long-standing but little-known relationship between China and the Arab world dating back to the ancient maritime Silk Road. On the opening day of the exhibition, Cai will create a large-scale daytime explosion event, titled Black Ceremony. Part of the mission of Mathaf, and of the entire Qatar Museums Authority, is to expand peoples ideas about art and culture in this regionto show that the story is bigger, more exciting and more surprising than might be supposed, said Qatar Museums Authority Chairperson Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani. With this exhibition by Cai Guo-Qiang, which marks so many firsts for both the artist and for us, we again open fascinating new territory for our audience to explore as we continue to encourage global cultural dialogue and exchange. Mathaf seeks to shift perceptions and understanding of both Arab art and the larger context of modern and contemporary art from an Arab perspective, and Saraab is a wonderful opportunity to show the world the potential of this idea, said Mathaf director Wassan AlKhudhairi. Our goal is to build connections between discoursesin the Arab world, in the international art world, and now too within the greater history of Asiaand Saraab will be a seminal event for the museum.

Exhibition Overview Featuring the artists characteristic use of symbols and stories about local history and transnational movements, Cai Guo-Qiang: Saraab explores the historic and contemporary iconography of the Arabian Gulf and its seafaring culture, as well as the Islamic history of Quanzhou. Works on view also address the ambiguity of Qatar and Chinas relationships to one another, as well as Cais own creative development over a lifetime. A millennial and symbolic journey, Saraab questions whether there is something illusory or unobtainable about the process of cultural, temporal and geographic translation. Since his youth, Cai had been curious about the traces of Islamic influence that can be seen to this day throughout his hometown, including the local streetscape, the grand Ashab Mosque and cemeteries with countless Arabic-inscribed tombstones. Located on the southeast coast of China, Quanzhou was a significant maritime port on the ancient Silk Road and a trade hub for silk, porcelain, tea leaves and spices. The city also hosted some of the earliest Muslim missionaries, now buried in the citys Holy Mausoleum. Saraab offers Cais perspective on the complex web of conceptual and material connections between China and the Arab world, of dynamics between historic localities marked as much by the passage of ideas and lived experience as by material trade. Saraab will feature more than 50 works, including 16 newly commissioned pieces, 30 recent works and nine documentary videos. The exhibition will showcase Cais diverse body of work, ranging from his signature gunpowder drawings, large-scale site-specific installations and the celebrated explosion events. Recent works will illustrate Cais artistic approach, tracing his creative development through the years and expanding awareness and understanding of his unique art-making process. The new commissions reflect my relationship with Arab culture, and draw from the relationship between my hometown Quanzhou with the Arab world, said the artist. Through the collaboration and exchange with volunteers in making gunpowder drawings and by opening the creative process to the public, I will have the chance to work together with local artists, and discuss how to transform traditional mediums and cultural symbols into contemporary concepts and art forms. The past works and documentary videos on the second floor of the museum form a mini retrospective that attempts to share with the Arab audience my growth as an artist in a multicultural world.

Exhibition Highlights Among the new works in Saraab is Homecoming, an installation of 60 rocks from Quanzhou, into which Cai has re-carved excerpts of Arabic inscriptions from the Koran and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad that are seen on the Muslim tombstones in his hometown. These boulders will form a winding path from Mathafs exterior courtyard to the inner atrium and visitors will be able to walk between the rocks, encountering the inscriptions one by one. According to Cai, the journey of the rocks from Quanzhou to Doha symbolizes a homecoming for Muslims in distant lands from the past millennium, offering solace and closure to their long awaited voyage to return home. Cai also will produce a number of new gunpowder drawings for the exhibition with the assistance of local volunteers, creating works that trace the maritime route from ancient Arabia to Quanzhou and echo the botanical patterns seen in Islamic decorative art and textiles. These gunpowder drawings provide a symbolic avenue for rebirth or healing, a measured tension between destruction and creation. Documentary video of this creative

process and Cais preparatory sketches for the exhibition also will be shown in Saraab. The works to be produced include Fragile, a unique 18-metre long by 3-metre wide porcelain mural comprised of more than 480 individual panels, marking the first time Cai is incorporating porcelain on a large scale into his work with gunpowder. Select gunpowder drawing events will be open to the public in October and all volunteers will be from the Doha community, a critical element both for the artists methodology and the museums philosophy of social engagement (information on how to participate can be found at www.mathaf.org). In keeping with Mathafs focus on education and broader contextualization, Saraab will include a documentary about the making of other commissioned works in the exhibition, as well as examples of Cais past work to illustrate his creative process, including experimental tests of gunpowder and fireworks, preparatory sketches, and video projections of the public performance of explosion projects and social artworks. Many featured past works directly link to the newly commissioned pieces, including the documentation of Bringing to Venice What Marco Polo Forgot (1995), a performance and th installation piece at the 46 Venice Biennale of a wooden fishing boat from Quanzhou carrying Chinese herbs and ginseng. A conceptual precursor to many of the works in Saraab, this work deals with the transportation of symbolic objects from China, linking the historic Silk Road to contemporary personal, even spiritual, pilgrimages. Other documented works featured in Saraab include Footprints of History: Fireworks Project for the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games that demonstrates Cais fearless approach to ambitious spectacle, and Man, Eagle and Eye in the Sky (2003), a social art project of painted kites flown in the Sahara Desert that mobilized the local population and was the artists first engagement in the Arab world. A bilingual Arabic-English catalogue will accompany the exhibition, featuring conversations between Cai Guo-Qiang and scholars on Sino-Arab history, an overview of regional art historical dynamics, and a monographic essay on the artist by Yuko Hasegawa, as well as images of never-before-published early works and new work created for Saraab.

About Cai Guo-Qiang Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China, and was trained in stage design at the Shanghai Theater Academy. His work has since crossed multiple mediums within art, including drawing, installation, video and performance art. While living in Japan from 1986 to 1995, he explored the properties of gunpowder in his drawings, an inquiry that eventually led to his experimentation with explosives on a massive scale and to the development of his signature explosion events. Drawing upon Eastern philosophy and contemporary social issues as a conceptual basis, these projects and events aim to establish an exchange between viewers and the larger universe around them, utilizing a site-specific th approach to culture and history. Cai was awarded the Golden Lion at the 48 Venice th th Biennale in 1999, the 7 Hiroshima Art Prize in 2007, and the 20 Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2009. He was Director of Visual and Special Effects for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In 2008, he was the subject of a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. In fall 2010, Cai created Odyssey for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Installed as part of the museums ongoing Portal Project, it is one of his largest gunpowder drawings to date. He currently lives and works in New York.

About Mathaf The first institution of its kind in the region, Mathaf offers an Arab perspective on modern and contemporary art and supports creativity, promotes dialogue and inspires new ideas. The 5,500-square-meter (59,000-square-foot) Museum, located in a former school building in Dohas Education City, has a collection that offers a rare comprehensive overview of modern Arab art, representing the major trends and sites of production spanning the 1840s through the present. Mathaf presents exhibitions that situate the Arab world in relation to a larger art context and also offers programs that engage the local and international community, encourage research and scholarship and contribute to the cultural landscape of the Gulf region, the Middle East, the Arab Diaspora and beyond.

About Qatar Museums Authority Established in 2005 by His Highness the Emir, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani to combine the resources of all museums in the State of Qatar, Qatar Museums Authority (QMA) is a governmental organization whose remit is to develop museums and cultural institutions and provide an effective system for collecting, protecting, preserving and interpreting historic sites, monuments and artifacts. Under the leadership of its Chairperson H.E. Sheikha Al Mayassa, QMA is transforming the State of Qatar into a cultural hub of the Middle East. The Museum of Islamic Art, inaugurated in 2008, is the Authoritys flagship project. The organization won further global acclaim with the December 2010 opening of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. QMAs goal of becoming a global leader in the world of museums, art and heritage will be advanced in the coming years with ambitious, world-class projects, including the Jean Nouvel-designed National Museum of Qatar. For further information, please visit www.qma.org.qa. Join the conversation on Twitter with @MathafModern and use hashtag #MathafModern. twitter.com/MathafModern facebook.com/MathafModern youtube.com/MathafModern To see more of Cai Guo-Qiangs works, please visit www.caiguoqiang.com - end For further information, please contact: Omar Chaikhouni, Qatar Museums Authority +974.4422.4608 / mchaikhouni@qma.org.qa Federica Zuccarini, Qatar Museums Authority +974.4422.4541 / fzuccarini@qma.org.qa Amanda Domizio, Ruder Finn Arts & Communications Counselors +1.212.583.2798 / domizioa@ruderfinn.com