Cai Guo-Qiang. Saraab. [English and Arabic Ed.]

Cai Guo-Qiang: Saraab is the artist's first solo exhibition in the Arab world and the first exhibition of a solo artist at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition showcases seventeen new, site-specific artworks by Cai Guo-Qiang in the context of a mini-retrospective including recent and rarely-shown works on paper, canvas and porcelain, documentation of creative process, and Cai's collaborations with local volunteers to create a series of his signature large-scale gunpowder drawings.

In Saraab, Cai Guo-Qiang suggestively juxtaposes cultural symbols and re-imagines historical connections between Doha, Qatar and his hometown, Quanzhou, in Southeast China. "A Millennial Journey from My Homeland" by the artist, and essays by Wassan Al-Khudairi, Deena Chalabi, Wu Youxiong, Abdulwahed al-Mawlawi, and Yuko Hasegawa explore these historical and cultural comparisons, and examine some aspects of the exhibition's implications for pan-Asian art history and institutional art outside a stereo-typical East/West relationship. Catalogue plates include images of each of the newly commissioned "Doha works"; stills from the spectacular explosion event realized for Saraab's opening; behind-the-scenes shots of the making of the exhibition; and a representative survey of major past works exhibited through videos and slideshows.

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China, in 1957. Between 1981 and 1985 he studied at the Department of Stage Design, Shanghai Theatre Academy, Shanghai. He resided in Tokyo, Japan, from 1986 to 1995; since then, he has been based in New York City.