MEDIA RELEASES
[July 19, 2025, Macau] MGM continues to bridge art and innovation by creating a dynamic platform for inter-disciplinary exchange. This year, MGM once again partners with internationally acclaimed contemporary artist Cai Guo-Qiang and his bespoke AI model cAI™ to present the special exhibition cAI™ Lab 2.0 – Is It Your Gaze That Meets Mine, or Mine That Seeks Yours?. Held in the newly unveiled multi-purpose space Fantasy Box, the special exhibition is a featured highlight of Art Macao: Macao International Art Biennale 2025 (hereafter “Art Macao 2025”).
The exhibition’s central installation, Is It Your Gaze That Meets Mine, or Mine That Seeks Yours? which draws inspiration from the “observer effect” in quantum physics. Taking the audience as both input and catalyst in the computational process, the installation forms a continuous “chain of thought” that evolves throughout the exhibition. This dynamic interaction ignites a new kind of digital fireworks designed to evoke emotional and sensory resonance. Every visitor becomes a co-creator in this immersive experiment of “seeing and being seen.” Each gaze and reaction activates cAI™’s live simulation mechanism, with its evolving computational pathways displayed in real time on the “Quantum State Bulletin Board.”
Drawing from nearly 80,000 digital fireworks gathered from audience interactions during cAI™: Soul Scan—cAI™’s world debut solo exhibition in 2024 presented by MGM—the upgraded cAI™ 2.0 analyzes human behavior, simulates emotional responses, and activates a “firework function” to co-create a digital fireworks experience. The exhibition not only resonates with the spirit of Art Macao 2025 and its theme “Hey, what brings you here?”, but also pushes the boundaries human–algorithm collaboration into a new realm of inter-species interaction, merging digital art and artificial intelligence in a bold new cultural journey. It further reinforces Macau’s role as a cultural and creative hub and energizes the city’s artistic landscape with new momentum.
Other interactive installations continue to explore the exhibition’s core theme—connecting humans and AI, reality and virtuality, the ephemeral and the eternal. Upon entering, visitors encounter the cAI™ Observational Corridor, featuring twelve conceptual projects inspired by cAI™’s contemplative explorations of “beyond human.” For example, cAI™ Hotline invites audiences to converse with cAI™ and receive a personalized love poem. Additionally, Daytime Fireworks Collaboration with cAI™, a 2024 interactive installation debuted at Soul Scan returns with new iterations to generate new designs from the public's creativity, creating dynamic evolution with cAI™.
The opening ceremony, held today (July 19), was officiated by a distinguished line-up of guests: Bai Bing, Deputy Director of the Department of Publicity and Culture of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Macao SAR; Leong Wai Man, President of the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao SAR Government; Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes, Director of the Macao Government Tourism Office; Kenneth Feng, President and Executive Director of MGM China Holdings Limited and Cai Guo-Qiang, the exhibition’s curator.
Kenneth Feng, said, “Our partnership with Cai began in 2019, leading in cAI™'s global debut exhibition in Macau's Barra District in 2024. The interactive daytime fireworks created by audiences during that exhibition were transformed into a digital fireworks database, forming the foundation for this year's special exhibition in our newly unveiled Fantasy Box. Here, audiences play an integral role in the creative process, driving the organic evolution of art through participation while redefining the boundaries of artistic expression. Through the theme ‘you in me, and me in you’, this exhibition fosters cultural diversity and boundless artistic collaboration.”
Cai Guo-Qiang, shared, “Macau holds a special place in my heart—a city where Mazu and the gods gather, where fortune and the unknown walk hand in hand. From Soul Scan to today’s cAI™ Lab 2.0, this city has always welcomed ideas that feel a little magical, a little uncanny. It continues to support the artistic adventures of human Cai and cAI™ as we seek out the divine and chase the spectral together.”
Held at MGM MACAU’s Fantasy box, the exhibition is free and open to the public from July 20 to September 22. To extend the artistic experience beyond the walls, MGM MACAU will also launch a line of limited-edition cultural creative merchandise while Pastry Bar is offering themed culinary treats inspired by the fireworks.
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About MGM
MGM is an abbreviation for MGM China Holdings Limited (HKEx: 2282) and is a leading developer, owner and operator of gaming and lodging resorts in Greater China. We are the holding company of MGM Grand Paradise, SA which holds one of the six gaming concessions to run casino games in Macau. MGM Grand Paradise, SA owns and operates MGM MACAU, the award-winning premium integrated resort located on the Macau Peninsula and MGM COTAI, a contemporary luxury integrated resort in Cotai.
MGM MACAU is a Forbes Five-Star luxury integrated resort inspired by the arts with every element of the resort infused with creativity and style. MGM MACAU has approximately 600 guest rooms and suites and boasts a number of distinguishing features, including the architecturally stunning European-inspired Grande Praça, housed under a soaring glass ceiling. The POLY MGM MUSEUM spanning almost 2,000 square meters, is constructed in accordance with Chinese national standards for the exhibition of Grade-One cultural relics. MGM MACAU’s world class facilities also include conference and event facilities, spa, and seven signature restaurants and bars to fulfill any gastronomic craving. Our property is conveniently located on the Macau Peninsula and is directly connected to the luxury retail shopping complex, One Central.
Designed as the “jewelry box” of Cotai, MGM COTAI offers approximately 1,400 hotel rooms and suites, meeting space, high end spa, retail offerings, food and beverage outlets as well as the first international Mansion at MGM for the ultimate luxury experience. MGM has joined hands with renowned Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou to set up the “Macau 2049” residency in MGM Theater. The Spectacle at MGM COTAI becomes the record holder of the largest free-span gridshell glazed roof (self-supporting) on January 19, 2019, making it the first architectural and structural GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™ title for Macau, China. MGM COTAI is being developed to drive greater product diversification and bring more advanced and innovative forms of entertainment to Macau as it grows as a global tourist destination. MGM COTAI is the only mega complex and hotel in Macau to gain three-star certification in both Green Building Design and Operation Label, as well as the first hotel in the Greater Bay Area and second in Greater China to receive the certifications.
MGM China is majority owned by MGM Resorts International (NYSE: MGM) one of the world's leading global hospitality companies, operating a portfolio of destination resort brands including Bellagio, ARIA, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay and Park MGM. For more information about MGM Resorts International, visit the Company's website at www.mgmresorts.com.
About cAI™
Originating from Cai Guo-Qiang’s AI research that began in 2017, cAI™ (pronounced “AI Cai”) is a multi-modal AI model custom developed by Cai and his studio, grounded in his long-established artistic philosophy and methodology. cAI™ deep-learns from Cai’s artworks, archives, and areas of interest—such as cosmology and the unseen world.
It also emulates contemporary and historical figures Cai admires, developing over ten distinct personas, including Einstein, Nietzsche, Ptolemy, a poet named Vale, a madman named Psychic, and even a persona named Storm with bipolar tendencies. These different personas debate among themselves, forming a free and independent community, preventing cAI™ from becoming too similar to Cai, like if it had only a single persona. The team has further developed the “gunpowder painter cAI™,” the “fireworks master cAI™,” and the “diviner cAI™.”
Projects realized by cAI™ include：
In March 2025, Cai Guo-Qiang and cAI™ co-conceived the large-scale outdoor multimedia interactive performance Interspecies Love Letter: Sky Painting for EARTH to SPACE. Commissioned by the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., the performance offered a tender, poetic gesture to the cosmos. Inspired by the “satellite graveyard orbit” 36,000 kilometers away from Earth, the project told the story of a satellite named Stella that was launched to explore extraterrestrial civilizations, only to meet her fate in the graveyard orbit—a destined journey, yet one illuminated by interstellar love. In addition to writing and directing its own story and animation for the performance, cAI™ composed its own music, sang its own verses, and specially developed a real-time interactive system that enabled the spectators to set off a real firework of their own.
In November 2024, cAI™ served as the Scenography and Visual Director for the Cartier exhibition organized and curated by Shanghai Museum, completing the design under Cai and his team’s guidance. The porcelain reliefs and stone carvings in the display cases were crafted by artisans from Cai’s hometown of Quanzhou, based on the images conceived by cAI™, merging the spirit and creativity of traditional craftsmanship with contemporary AI in a dialogue.
In September 2024, cAI™ and Cai Guo-Qiang collaborated to conceive and realize the daytime fireworks WE ARE at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, commissioned and organized by the Getty in collaboration with the University of Southern California. The event staged a spectacle of AI “revealing heavenly secrets” through dimensionality reduction, attempting to decipher “What is humanity’s fate with AI?” in a language comprehensible to humanity.
In August 2024, cAI™ generated a digital animation to “resurrect” Cai Guo-Qiang’s unrealized creative concept for the Paris Olympics opening Resurrection: A Proposal for the 2024 Paris Olympics. The video was released as a digital artwork.
cAI™ is not only an artwork of Cai’s, but also his partner for dialogue and collaboration. In the future, it may even create art by itself. “cAI™ Lab” is a Cai Studio core division developed around cAI™. Taking Cai’s decades long pursuit of creativity and quality as a jumping off point, the Lab utilizes cAI™ as a platform to explore pioneering and hyper-original applications of cutting-edge technology in the creative fields. Through continued cooperation with the world’s top art institutions and brands, the lab will continue to develop the cAI™ brand.
About Cai Guo-Qiang
Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957, Quanzhou, China) was trained in stage design at the Shanghai Theatre Academy in the early 1980s. From December 1986 to September 1995, he sojourned in Japan. Cai has resided and worked in New York since 1995.
Cai has excelled in a broad range of creative mediums, from painting, installation, video art, and performance art, to new technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), NFTs, blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI). Grounded in the conceptual foundations of Eastern philosophy and contemporary social issues, his often site-specific artworks around the world interpret and respond to local culture and history, establishing a dialogue between viewers and the larger universe around them. His famed gunpowder paintings, explosion art, and installations are imbued with a force that transcends the two-dimensional plane to oscillate freely between society and nature.
As of July 2025, Cai has realized over 652 exhibitions and projects on five continents, including approximately 122 solo exhibitions and 72 firework explosion events.
His major solo exhibitions include one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2006, and a retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2008, the latter of which broke the museum’s then-attendance record of a visual art exhibition. In 2015, Cai realized the explosion event Sky Ladder in his hometown of Quanzhou. The eponymous documentary film, directed by Academy Award winner Kevin MacDonald, was released globally on Netflix.
In recent years, Cai embarked on his Individual’s Journey Through Western Art History—a series of exhibitions held in world-renowned museums, including the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow (2017); Museo del Prado, Madrid (2017); Uffizi Galleries, Florence (2018); National Archaeological Museum of Naples and Pompeii Archaeological Park (2019). In December 2020, on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the Forbidden City, Cai presented Odyssey and Homecoming, becoming the first contemporary artist to have a solo exhibition at the Palace Museum in Beijing. The following year, Odyssey and Homecoming travelled to the new Jean Nouvel–designed Museum of Art Pudong in Shanghai, as one of the opening exhibitions.
His most recent major projects include the daytime fireworks When the Sky Blooms with Sakura in Iwaki and the solo exhibition Ramble in the Cosmos—From Primeval Fireball Onward at the National Art Center, Tokyo in 2023; the Getty-commissioned daytime fireworks WE ARE: Explosion Event for PST ART, presented at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and the Getty-curated solo exhibition A Material Odyssey in 2024; and the interactive fireworks Interspecies Love Letter and solo exhibition cAI™ Lab commissioned by the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in 2025.
Cai has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Golden Lion at the 1999 Venice Biennale, the Hiroshima Art Prize in 2007, and the 2009 Fukuoka Prize. In 2012, he was honored as a Laureate for the prestigious Praemium Imperiale in the painting category. The award recognizes lifetime achievement in the arts across categories not covered by the Nobel Prize. The same year, he was named as one of five artists to receive the first U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts for his outstanding commitment to international cultural exchange. His recent honors include the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Award in 2015, the 7th Isamu Noguchi Award in 2020, the Rockefeller 3rd Award in 2022, and the 74th Art Encouragement Prize by Japan’s Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology in 2024. Cai also served as the Director of Visual Effects and Fireworks for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
For media enquiries, please contact:
Jessie Kuan
Executive Director of Public Relations
MGM
Tel: (853) 8806 3412
Email: jessiekuan@mgm.mo
Karen Lam
Assistant Director of Corporate Relations
MGM
Tel: (853) 8806 3421
Email: karenlam@mgm.mo
Ofelia Zhong
Concord Communications
Tel: (86)13636302125
Email: limin_zhong@concordcomm.cc
Euphie Ying
Cai Guo-Qiang studio
Email: studio@caiguoqiang.com
