In his art Cai Guo-Qiang creates a system of poetic analogies by mixing ancient and modern while injecting social commentary and, occasionally, art-historical references. In Dream, 2002, he spread an enormous piece of diaphanous red silk on the floor and deployed four industrial fans to blow air underneath the cloth and set it in motion. The ceiling was festooned with red lanterns evocative of funerary paper forms from Quanzhou (the city in Fujian province where Cai was born), traditionally used in ritualistic cremations to guarantee smooth passage of the deceased to the afterlife. These typically