PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — An exhibition by the internationally renowned Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang will launch the Year of China at Brown University. Held throughout the 2011-12 academic year, the Year of China will offer public lectures, cultural events, academic conferences, and multimedia activities to advance understanding of China’s culture, history, people, geography and neighbors, and its relation to the world. All events are free and open to the public.

Featured guests will include Cai, Factory Girls author Leslie Chang; producer Janet Yang ’78; author Ha Jin; Justin Lin, chief economist of the World Bank; and Wei Yang, president of Zhejiang University. Additionally, a community reading program, "China ... Page by Page," will organize book discussions and author readings for community and alumni groups.

“The Year of China is a natural extension of Brown’s strategic initiative of internationalization and timely because of China’s dynamic global presence,” said Chung-I Tan, professor of physics and faculty organizer of the Year of China. “Brown’s future depends on making the campus more a part of the world, a world in which the Chinese presence is immense.”

Cai Guo-Qiang: Move Along, Nothing to See Here

The inaugural program, Cai Guo-Qiang: Move Along, Nothing to See Here, will open at the Cohen Gallery in the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts from Wednesday, Sept. 14, through Friday, Oct. 28, 2011. An opening reception and lecture by Cai will be held on Friday, Sept. 16, at 5:30 p.m.

Cai has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, among others. His mid-career retrospective I Want to Believe opened at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in 2008 before traveling to the National Art Museum of China in Beijing and the Guggenheim, Bilbao. Cai was awarded the Golden Lion award at the 48th Venice Biennale, and later curated the first Chinese Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005. He also gained widespread attention as director of visual and special effects for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Throughout his career, Cai has addressed the violence of the age in which we live in works referencing the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the conflict between Taiwan and mainland China, 9/11, and other acts of terrorism. Move Along, Nothing to See Here, the sculptural centerpiece of the exhibition, takes its title from the phrase used by police and other authority figures to deter onlookers from lingering at accidents and other spectacles. The work consists of two 12-foot crocodiles cast in resin, realistically painted, and pierced with several thousand sharp objects — knives, forks, nail clippers, and the like — that were confiscated at airport-security checkpoints in New York. The sculpture elicits a two-fold sense of menace: the threat represented by these powerful and dangerous animals is compounded by the violence of the attack on them. This is one of a number of works — tigers pierced by arrows, exploding cars — in which the artist responds to terrorism (here, specifically, to 9/11). He has described his approach as “a frank look at society today and cultural/political issues we have to deal with.”

Two gunpowder works — a medium for which Cai is known — complete the exhibition. A related drawing titled Snapping Crocodile was created by capturing the vestiges of a gunpowder explosion on paper. The video Clear Sky Black Cloud documents an explosion event on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Each day at noon, a single explosion created a small black smoke cloud that floated over Central Park, much like a drawing in the sky. In contrast to his many elaborate explosion events, Clear Sky Black Cloud was elegantly simple.

The exhibition is curated by Wendy Edwards and Jo-Ann Conklin, with support provided by the Creative Arts Council, the David Winton Bell Gallery, and the Department of Visual Art, Brown University. The Cohen Gallery, 154 Angell St., is open Wednesday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday from 1-4 p.m.

Selected Events

To herald the Year of China, the dean of the College selected Leslie Chang’s Factory Girls (2009), a book about rural migration in China and the modern industrial revolution, as the “First Reading” for the Class of 2015. Chang will visit campus to deliver the First Readings Lecture on Tuesday, Oct. 11. She will also join author Ed Rhoads and current Brown students and faculty in a panel discussion titled “A Century of Chinese Students Studying Abroad,” on Wednesday, Oct. 12.

Additional events include a lecture series with leading Chinese academicians engaged at the forefront of nanoscience and nanotechnology; a history of art in China series; a “China Through the Lens” film series, the annual Strait Talk, a peace-building program for students from both sides of the Taiwan Strait and the United States; a series on the Chinese scientific tradition; two performances by the Shanghai Theatre Academy; and related exhibitions at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, the John Hay Library, and the RISD Museum. In collaboration with student groups, the Year of China will also celebrate important Chinese holidays including the Mid-Autumn Festival, Chinese New Year, and the Lantern Festival.

A full listing of Year of China events is available online: www.brown.edu/year-of-china.

The Year of China initaive is the latest in a series of University programming focusing on international issues and research. The 2007-08 academic year featured events and programs related to Latin America, followed by a Focus on Africa series in 2008-09, and the Year of India in 2009-10.