Monday, 28 May 2012

Doha: The Arab Museum of Modern Art (Mathaf) organised a closing celebration for the last day of the exhibition "Saraab" (mirage) by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang who with his gun powder has explored the ideas on the path of an imaginary travel between Doha and his hometown Quanzhou in China.

"Generally I attend the opening of my exhibitions and never return again. I feel I have been away from Doha for ages, but now that I'm back in Qatar it seems I have never left" said Guo-Qiang opening a discussion on his works with Qatari artist Abdulwahed Al Mawlawi.

"The first time I came to Qatar I thought the Arab culture was very distant and alien. So I decided to look inside my personal experience to find a common frame," said Guo-Qiang who comes from Quanzhou one of the starting points of the Silk Road and home to a lot of Muslim families.

Even though the artist was raised between Confucius, Taoism and Buddhism, as a child Guo-Qiang used to ride his bike to a Muslim cemetery and this experience emerges from his art.At the entrance of the Mathaf there are a number of big granite rocks from the artist's land on which are carved verses from the Holy Quran and the Prophet Muhammad's sayings, which were inscribed in Arabic calligraphy on thousands of tombstones in the Muslim cemeteries in Quanzhou.

But the emblem of the connection between the Arab world and the artist's land is his work "Fragile". On a huge wall with elaborately sculpted porcelain, Guo-Qiang made the gunpowder explode in order to form the word "fragile" written in Arabic calligraphy. This type of porcelain manufactured near the artist's hometown was historically traded by sea to the Arab world while gun powder is a Chinese invention. The juxtaposition of gunpowder and porcelain suggests the fragility in human relations, whether between individuals, nations or culture. "When I wrote "fragile" in Arabic, I learned something very important about the Arab world. The twist and turns of Arabic calligraphy gave me emotions and I learned the importance of fragility. Before I was always paying attention only to strength and power" said Guo-Qiang.

At the closing ceremony, Guo-Qiang was handed a personalised award of the "Best Special Event of the Middle East 2012" won by Innovations Unlimited ME (IUME) following the artist's explosion event "Black ceremony".

"I feel that this exhibition in Doha is the beginning of many projects in the Middle East, but I haven't planned anything specific yet" said the artist, who this year will inaugurate exhibitions in Denmark, Brazil and Australia.

© The Peninsula 2012