Explosion into Emptiness: Daoist Reverberations in the Art of Cai Guo-Qiang

Abstract

What can contemporary art teach us about ancient Daoist concepts of emptiness? This article explores the notion of Daoist inspired voidness as witnessed in the photograph The Century with Mushroom Clouds: Project for the 20th Century (1996) by artist Cai Guo-Qiang 蔡國強 (b. 1957). Cai's The Century portrays a lone figure with a cloud of white gunpowder smoke moments before its impending disappearance—his performative gesture reflects a potent cultural symbol of emptiness that simultaneously embodies the ephemeral nature of all forms of manifestation. I suggest this artwork echoes Daoist undertones concerning worldly expression, transformation, and the dreamlike appearance of reality in connection with primordial emptiness. The work builds upon a lineage of Chinese art practices and a rich realm of Daoist ideas concerning the living void as "eternally present" (Mitchell 1988, 25). According to this account of emptiness, on the one hand we experience what seems to be the real corporeality of existence (Cai's explosive creation as captured in a photo), and on the other, we understand this moment is elusive and dreamlike in origin (like a fleeting summer cloud). This interpretation of emptiness illustrates the transient, floating illusion of our material world by way of an imaginative aesthetic embodiment that is ultimately void. Thus, our engagement with Cai's artistic expression of emptiness provides a unique encounter with Daoist consciousness through a contemporary artwork.