Cai Guo-Qiang: Fallen Blossoms

Fallen Blossoms: Explosion Project
December 11, 2009, 4:30 p.m., 60 seconds
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Cai Guo-Qiang: Fallen Blossoms took place at sunset on Friday, December 11 2009 on the East Terrace of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where a blossoming flower shaped from gunpowder fuse was ignited. This was immediately followed by a projection installation of the explosion (at a significantly slower frame rate) at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. The projection enabled viewers to more carefully witness the simultaneous bloom and decay, poetically addressing the passage of time and the role memory plays in attending to the past and memorializing.

The event was inspired by the memory of Anne d'Harnoncourt (1943-2008), late director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and her long friendship with the founder and artistic director of the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Marion Boulton Stroud (1939-2015). The exhibition addressed themes of memory, loss and renewal on a personal and public level. It was Cai's first solo exhibition in Philadelphia and the first in the United States since his retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in early 2008.