Cai Guo-Qiang: A Clan of Boats

Throughout his career, Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang (born 1957) has used the motif of the boat to represent the exchange of knowledge across cultures. In his latest monograph, A Clan of Boats, Guo-Qiang gathers his use of the motif into a single compilation and speaks for the first time about the many works he has created with boats throughout the course of his artistic career. I am actually a vessel myself, he writes in this volume; I left home a long time ago, the centuries-old harbor city of Quanzhou. I sailed to Shanghai first, and then to Tokyo, New York, and the rest of the world, further and further, shuttling between different ports, different natural sceneries, cultures, and histories. The book includes an essay written by art critic Karen Smith and two interviews (conducted ten years apart) by Hans Ulrich Obrist.