Having accomplished himself across a variety of media, Cai Guo-Qiang initially began working with gunpowder to foster spontaneity and confront the suppression that he felt from the controlled artistic tradition and social climate in China at the time. While living in Japan from 1986 to 1995, Cai explored the properties of gunpowder in his drawings, an inquiry that eventually led to his experimentation with explosives on a massive scale, and the development of his signature explosion events, exemplified in his series, Projects for Extra-terrestrials. These explosion projects, both wildly poetic and ambitious at their core, aim to establish an exchange between viewers and the larger universe around them. Cai explains about the "painting with gunpowder" himself:

About Cai Guo-Qiang

My basic idea is that human beings are the children of our mother earth or nature, or the universe (or whatever one prefers to refer to which has cosmic significance), and in that sense we are all one with nature or the universe. While this seems a simple and obvious concept, it is one that modern people tend to forget. This is one reason I choose to wield natural materials in my painting. Additionally, individual power or capability is limited, and individual lives are short and weak compared to nature, which is strong and limitless. Therefore I borrow power from nature by using the "skin" of the earth (soil) and other natural materials that are alive as we are alive, and I use this power to create effects that seem to me wondrous. I seek through my paintings a oneness of work, of nature and of myself as well as a fusion of humanity, history and nature.