Blast Off

Cai Guo-Qiang has wowed audiences around the world with his explosive pyrotechnic art—and he couldn’t have done it without the help of one of his biggest champions, Wendi Murdoch

- Oliver Giles

Wendi Murdoch is passionate about a great many things—fashion, food and film among them. She’s also obsessive about technology, and can list from memory facts and figures about the hottest start-ups from Silicon Valley to Shanghai. But most of all, Murdoch loves artists—none more so than Cai Guo-Qiang. “I have many great pieces from Cai,” she says in her rapidfire English. “They’re in my living room, my bedroom, my hallway. They’re in my home in China, my home in the US. I love to be with his art. It makes me happy.” She pauses. “I’m very honoured to have them.”

Cai, sitting next to her, beams.

We’re gathered around a table in Cai’s studio in New York’s East Village shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic sweeps into the city. This immaculate, airy space is where Cai, whose unlikely medium is gunpowder, dreams up the spectacular pyrotechnic displays that have made him a global sensation since the mid 1990s, when the Asian Cultural Council invited him to take part in a residency programme in the US. It’s also where many of his collaborations with Murdoch—who was first a friend, then a collector of his art and is now one of his greatest patrons—begin. Here, at this table, they first discussed Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang, a documentary Murdoch produced about his decades-long dream to create a 500-metre-tall ladder of fireworks that would briefly connect Earth to the heavens. The film took the Sundance Film Festival by storm, was bought by Netflix and released in 2016.