Cai Guo-Qiang

Cai Guo-Qiang is one of the most important Chinese artists to have emerged internationally in the 1990s. Best known for his spectacular gunpowder projects at locations ranging from museum entrances to the sites of Land art works such as Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty, Cai has explored a diversity of media and artforms. These have included works such as an extension of the Great Wall of China, designed to be seen from outer space by extraterrestrial beings; feng shui rearrangements of public and private spaces both in Japan and New York; participatory projects with kites, jacuzzis and mini golf courses; and sculptures constructed from melted-down cars or abandoned boats. His projects are strongly influenced by their location and the works are frequently altered or developed as they are exhibited at new sites. Unifying Cai's wide-ranging work is his consistent investigation of humanity's place within the universe. Born in Quanzhou, China, in 1957, Cai lived in Tokyo from 1985 until 1995 when he moved to New York. Now recognized as a major artist worldwide, he has made projects in all the inhabited continents of the world.

Dana Friis-Hansen is Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Austin Museum of Art in Texas. Previously he was Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston (1995-99), Associate Curator at Nanjo and Associates in Tokyo (1991-5) and Curator at the List Visual Arts Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts (1989-91). Friss-Hansen was co-curator (with Fumio Nanjo) of 'TransCulture' at the 1995 Venice Biennale.

Octavio Zaya is a critic and curator. Advisor of Museo de Arte Contemporàneo de Castilla y Leon, (MUSAC) in Leon, Spain, and co-director of Atlàntica, a bilingual quarterly magazine of art and culture, he also belongs to the editorial board for NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art and Lab 71 (New York), and is a US correspondent for Flash Art. He has co-curated such international exhibitions as the 1st and 2nd Johannesburg Biennials (1995 and 1997) and Documenta 11 (2002).

Takashi Serizawa, once an urban designer, is now Director of the environmental and art organisation P3 Art and Environment in Tokyo. He is the author of View from the Moon: Hints on Living in the Twenty-first Century (1999), and the publisher of the website REALTOKYO.