Cai Guo-Qiang: Fireflies

September 15 – October 8, 2017, Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia

In September 2017, Fung Collaboratives launched a major site-specific commissioned work by the internationally acclaimed artist Cai Guo-Qiang. The project was commissioned by the Association for Public Art (aPA) in Philadelphia for the occasion of the centennial of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Cai Guo-Qiang: Fireflies invites the public to actively experience the grand boulevard as a nocturnal dreamscape conjured from the languorous movements of bobbing clusters of glowing handcrafted Chinese lanterns and groups of customized peddle vehicles. Nine hundred illuminated lanterns in a bevy of colors and shapes will float along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, held aloft by a fleet of 27 pedicabs.

Fireflies, the artist’s largest public art project in the US in a decade, runs for approximately four weekends: September 14 to October 8, 2017, Thursdays through Sundays from 6-10pm. Beginning September 15, members of the public are invited to board the vehicles to take rides up and down the Parkway from Sister Cities Park at Logan Square to Iroquois Park across from Eakins Oval.

The lanterns in Fireflies are being handcrafted in Cai Guo-Qiang’s hometown of Quanzhou, China. Their bright, twinkling lights evoke the artist’s own childhood memories. Among them will be orb and star shaped lanterns, as well as designs of emojis; pandas, roosters and tigers; space aliens and UFOs; cars, trains, boats, submarines, helicopters, and rocket ships; and hamburgers, sushi, and donuts. Transported to Philadelphia, their various colors and shapes evoke the diverse cultures and peoples that come from all over the world to take root in the United States.

Major support for Cai Guo-Qiang: Fireflies has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.