[2] As an adolescent and teenager, Cai witnessed the social effects of the Cultural Revolution first-hand, personally participating in demonstrations and parades himself.

[2] In his late teens and early twenties, Cai Guo-Qiang acted in two martial art films, The Spring and Fall of a Small Town and Real Kung Fu of Shaolin.

Later intrigued by the modernity of Western art forms such as oil painting, he studied stage design at the Shanghai Theater Academy from 1981 to 1985.

"[6] Cai was among the first artists to contribute to discussions of Chinese art as a viable intellectual narrative with its own historical context and theoretical framework.

[3][4] In 1990, Cai began Projects for Extraterrestrials, which consisted of using large fireworks and extensive trails of blazing gunpowder that span across landscapes and building surfaces.

10 (1993) was representative of the nature of the projects as a whole, as it involved an approximately six-mile-long gunpowder fuse that extended beyond the western end of the Great Wall at the edge of the Gobi Desert.

For it, Cai arranged gunpowder on white garments in the form of dragons symbolizing life, and set fire to the powder to burn the images into the clothes.

MASS MoCA describes the installation as such: Nine cars arced through the 300 foot long gallery, tumbling and suspended in mid-air as if by stop-action.

An explosive moment, expanded in time and space as if in a dream, the cars formed the centerpiece of Inopportune by Cai Guo Qiang.

An adjacent gallery opened for the installation housed Inopportune: Stage 2, in which nine realistic tigers also hovered in the air, each one pierced by hundreds of arrows.

The imagery in this gallery referred to the famous 13th-century Chinese story epitomizing bravery, in which a man named Wu Song rescued a village by slaying a man-eating tiger.

Engaging images of our unsettled world, Inopportune created a theatrical, psychologically charged space in which to reflect on some of the most pressing dilemmas and contradictions affecting us such as terrorism and cultural, religious conflict, violence and beauty, the meaning of heroism.Inopportune: Stage One (2004) is also featured in the main entrance of the Seattle Art Museum.

"[12][14] As a tribute to the center of the Italian Renaissance, Cai Guo-Qiang created an explosive depiction of flowers using fireworks across the blue skies of Florence, Italy, as his canvas, on November 18, 2018.

[17][18][19][20] For PST (previously known as Pacific Standard Time), Cai designed “WE ARE” in collaboration with his proprietary AI model cAI™ that gathers information and data from his artworks, archives, and areas of interest.

[19][21][22][23] Approximately 4,000[20] to 4,500[19] guests stood on the Coliseum’s playing field to watch the fiery and smoky production that triggered several loud blasts in and around the stadium and the neighboring USC campus.

[17] In an interview in The Brooklyn Rail, Cai said of his piece Light Cycle, commissioned by Creative Time in 2003: "Because this was a post 9/11 New York I wanted to provide an anchor and reference point for people to feel hope.

Venice's Rent Collection Courtyard drew condemnation within China from the original authors of the Socialist Realist sculpture for destroying their "spiritual property.

The exhibition opened on December 5th with Black Ceremony, the artist's largest ever daytime explosion event and includes several large-scale site-specific installations.

[28] In 2012, Cai’s “Mystery Circle: Explosion Event,” featured 40,000 mini rockets that blasted for approximately two minutes at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles.

[29] Cai was highlighted in the 2018 BBC series Civilisations, episode 9, "The Vital Spark" in which he was interviewed by Simon Schama, as an artist offering inspiration for our time.

He also gained widespread attention as the Director of Visual and Special Effects for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.