Today, the Centre Pompidou, Paris’s beating heart of modern and contemporary art, closed its doors for a five-year renovation. This closure follows Wolfgang Tillmans’ spectacular takeover of the space, loved by thousands of visitors.

In a gesture as poetic as it monumental, the museum joined forces with White Cube to present The Last Carnival, a daytime fireworks performance by the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang.

Timed to coincide with Art Basel Paris, the event unfolded in three acts, The Banquet, The Dawn of AI, and The Last Carnival, each conceived in collaboration with Cai’s own AI model, cAI™. Merging the ancient language of gunpowder with the speculative realm of artificial intelligence, Cai transformed the sky above the Pompidou into a fleeting fresco: a farewell and a prophecy in smoke and flame referencing artworks in the collection: Matisse, Duchamp and many more.

“For the first time in its history, the Centre Pompidou’s façade becomes a monumental painting,” said curator Jérôme Neutres. “Cai delivers his most profound and complex work yet, in dialogue with both AI and the Parisian public.”

Born in Quanzhou in 1957, Cai Guo-Qiang has spent his career exploring the volatile beauty of creation and destruction. After studying stage design in Shanghai, he emigrated to Japan in the 1980s, where he began experimenting with gunpowder as both material and metaphor. His alchemical practice, at once explosive and meditative, has since spanned continents, from his pyrotechnic displays at the 2008 Beijing Olympics to his ethereal Sky Ladder in his hometown, an artwork that briefly stitched earth to heaven in flame.

With The Last Carnival, Cai seems to have redirected his fire toward the future, new technology-assisted, sky-bound, and defiantly ephemeral. As the smoke dissolved into the Parisian dusk, the work read as both elegy and evolution.

The Centre Pompidou will close completely for major renovation works supported by the French Ministry of Culture. The project includes asbestos removal, façade restoration, improved fire safety, greater accessibility, and enhanced energy efficiency. Beyond technical upgrades, it also marks the launch of a new large-scale cultural project, set to reopen in 2030.

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Image: “Le Dernier Carnaval” (The Last Carnival), orchestrated by artist Cai Guo-Qiang with AI assistance, at the Centre Pompidou (Beaubourg) to mark its closing for a five-year renovation project, in Paris on October 22, 2025. (Photo by Thibaud MORITZ / AFP) (Photo by THIBAUD MORITZ/AFP via Getty Images)