Bigfoot’s Footprints: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 6

Bigfoot’s Footprints: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 6 belongs to a series of gunpowder drawings that Cai Guo-Qiang made in Tokyo in the early 1990s as proposals for large-scale outdoor projects. In this drawing, Cai laid out a plan to create gunpowder explosions in the airspace between two nations. Upon ignition, the bursts would appear in the shape of abstracted footprints and generate a sequence of flashes as if the mythical creature Bigfoot had run across the sky, rendering the territorial boundaries porous. The drawing serves not only as an instructive diagram or rehearsal of an event, but also as a standalone work using Cai’s signature medium and method of mark-making: gunpowder explosions, which can destruct and construct at the same time. It therefore encapsulates the conceptual, visual, and philosophical foundations of his oeuvre.

The dark marks and textures in the composition result from the burned debris of combusted gunpowder and charred paper, after the artist exploded gunpowder on the paper substrate. Fifteen clusters that represent "footprints" and linear marks that connect them occupy a diagonal trajectory. From the bottom right to top left, the size of the footprints decreases, which suggests traveled distance and an aerial viewpoint; as the title indicates, the work takes the point of view of extraterrestrials. This elevated perspective is a conceptual and compositional strategy signifying an idealized neutrality inspired by Cai’s wish to transcend cultural differences. He wrote on the drawing in Simplified Chinese alongside diagrammatic ink inscriptions detailing the concept, vision, and the technical and formal specifications for the explosion project. Cai eventually realized the idea with fireworks during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, in which Bigfoot "walked" from the Forbidden City to the National Stadium ("Bird’s Nest") along the city’s axis, which was broadcast worldwide.