Three bugs with their long noses lit up in fairy lights— a sense of dreaminess amidst the busy public square which seems to fill up now and then. Every so often, passersby hug the cutouts of fabric stuck onto the bug bodies, taking a photo and bringing a piece of memory with them.

On display from March 20 to April 6 at Pacific Place, these bugs are part of the offsite projects by Art Basel. For the artist, Monster Chetwynd, the installation is at least six months of hard work. “They look great as a site static install. But then when the dance layer is there, it does seem to make everything very magical,” artist Monster Chetwynd says.

When Monster was six, she used to live in Hong Kong. She was aware of the local creatures and critters, and the lanternfly with the long nose was something that struck her as beautiful. “It’s not unappealing, it’s quite cute,” Monster says. “It encourages people to investigate ecology more and not take it for granted.”

“I don't want to just make something entirely fake out of entirely synthetic materials for no reason whatsoever,” she adds.

The installation at Pacific Place.

Monster calls herself “a sort of rabble-rouser”, however, she believes it is dangerous to situate herself on a high platform and ask everyone to preach a topic. To her, if there is an urgent climate issue, it should be dealt with in a more direct way, rather than addressed by a sculpture exhibiting in a mall.

“It's quite convoluted, but at the same time, for some reason, I’ve got a very strong, intuitive, and instinctive faith that it has some good bridging,” she says.

At the end of the day, Monster wants the public to enjoy her installation. On March 28 and April 5, the installation will light up again with a ballet duet. The dance is “poetic, expressive, and sensitive” as Monster puts it. In fact, it partly originated from a Powell and Pressburger production, The Tales of Hoffmann, and partly from a Technicolor production, Hans Christian Andersen.

The ballet duet.

“I would love to disarm an audience. I would love someone coming along to look over the balcony and see something that draws them in and they recognise it, makes them think, makes them smile,” she says.

“There's a lot of ideas where art should be outside of the studio or the museum,” she adds. “I believe that anyone can have their way to decipher something.”

A mall installation, although miles away from the woods, presents a lighthearted encounter between human and nature, and a clash between static display and theatrical performance, bringing life to this Central mall.

Picture credits: Pacific Place

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