Dr. Cai Qing

Dr. Cai Qing is an artist, curator and art critic, active in the fields of contemporary art and performance art. He is also engaged in art education and has served as a visiting or full-time professor at many key art academies in China, teaching contemporary art and holding performance art workshops.

Cai Qing has curated many art projects and exhibitions, including the first important underground contemporary art group exhibition after 1989 in China, “Traces of Survival”, which he initiated and curated in 1998 in Beijing in collaboration with Feng Boyi; the performance art exhibition “Construction before Destruction” at Shifo Village, Zhengzhou in 2008; the series of large-scale international contemporary art exhibitions “Symbiosis” held at the Chongqing Yangtze Contemporary Art Museum in 2016; at the end of 2018, he participated in the “Action Art 1998-2018” international performance art seminar held by the Inter art center in Quebec as a speaker and curator of the Chinese section, and exhibited his nearly 20 years of Chinese performance art documents at the le lieu art center; in addition, he holds the “Live Art Tour” in different locations around the world every year, including “Overlap Kassel” completed during the Kassel Documenta 15 in 2022. The “Immersive” live art tour 8 in New York in September 2023 and the live art tour 9 in Dhaka, Bangladesh in March 2024. The 10th live performance art tour is expected to beheld in Paris from October 10 next year.

While doing artistic practice, he has published several important professional works and published art criticism in important art magazines in China and abroad. Monographs include "Performance Art and Spiritual Therapy", which is the first monograph on performance art in China, published by Beijing World Book Publishing House in 2012; "Performance Art Scene" was also published by Beijing World Book Publishing House in 2013; in 2017, his other two new books "Experimental Art Practice - Action Overseas" and "Cai Qing 2015 Performance Art Yearbook" were published by Beijing Today Art Museum Publishing House.

During the pandemic, he worked even harder and wrote several new books on performance art, such as "Sinking. Returning to the Underground", " Attack from the side", "The Assembly That Cannot Be Forgotten", etc. He also used the international network to organize exhibitions and edited many new books on art interactive projects. At the end of 2021, he planned the "Pure Land-Live Art Tour 6" in Taiwan, which can be said to have broken the silence during the pandemic for the first time and revived the live performance art festival that had disappeared for several years. Cai Qing is planning a live performance art tour in the vast sky of international performance art. He is everywhere!