Shoppers at Hong Kong’s high-end mall Pacific Place are in for a surprise come late March. Three oversized lanternflies will land in the central atrium, on an aquatic-themed vinyl floor adorned with images of dancers and loosely sketched lily pads. Lanternfly Ballet (2025) is the latest piece by Zurich-based, British-born artist Monster Chetwynd. The only offsite project in this year’s Art Basel Hong Kong’s Encounters sector, which is dedicated to monumental artworks, Lanternfly Ballet draws equally from the indigenous insect’s curious biology and 1950s cinema and ballet history. Unsurprisingly, the work will be steeped in the DIY aesthetic that has been Chetwynd’s signature style for decades. It promises to be a visual extravaganza – even when it’s not being activated by sequined catsuit-wearing performers (an occurrence scheduled to take place three times between late March and late April).  

As she put the final touches to her ballet, I spoke to Chetwynd about her childhood memories, her love of the silver screen, and the best way to know whether an artwork has worked out.  

One little-known fact about you is that you lived in Hong Kong as a child. 

That’s true. I lived in Hong Kong on Lamma Island in a village called Yung Shue Wan between the ages of 5 and 7. I even went to a local school and learned Cantonese. I was the only European kid in the class. 

How do you remember the city then and your time there? 

It was an amazing time. I’ve got completely fantastic memories. Lamma Island was very different from Hong Kong Island. There was a toy factory there, making Popeye characters, and you’d find piles of discarded plastic toys everywhere. It felt magical. I don’t remember ever cooking at home. We lived above a restaurant and would go downstairs to eat. I only ate with chopsticks; I didn’t even know how to use a knife and fork. I learned to swim there. Once a month, the whole family would go to the Mandarin Oriental hotel on the main island, where we were allowed to have a banana split. Everything was so elegant. The toilets even had a willow pattern in the bowl – it blew my mind. I’ve never had a more glamorous experience in a bathroom. Living in Hong Kong was exciting and fun. 

Have your memories influenced your thinking about the Lanternfly Ballet project? 

Undoubtedly, but, in a way, it’s more profound than that. As a child, I lived in a lot of different countries, including Pakistan and Malaysia. And, while I’m fully aware that you cannot escape your biases, I’ve been brought up feeling comfortable in many places. When I do a performance, I’m more focused on what I want to bring to it [than where I come from or the context I work in]. In Hong Kong, I want to bring something romantic, light, and uplifting. Even though we are using synthetic fabric and metal structures, the piece is also informed by ecological concerns. This brings us to the lanternfly, which is an indigenous creature that has been misnamed – the nose doesn’t glow at all, although it looks like it should! I’ve been obsessed with it since I was a kid. I even had one pinned in a box! 

Now another Hong Kong memory comes to mind: the Moon festival. As children, we were given these gorgeous lanterns – so beautiful they made you want to cry – but we had to burn them the same evening. Beauty and loss, all mixed up. Somehow, that feels relevant too. 

The 1951 film The Tales of Hoffmann starts with a dragonfly ballet, which is one of the key references for the project. What attracted you to it?

This film is very unusual. It’s a British film – you know the ‘no sex please, we’re British’ stereotype – yet it’s completely exuberant. It also breaks with the idea of back- and frontstage. It has a literal backstage in the storytelling but also breaks the fourth wall, shifting between theatricality and cinema. It’s very, very yummy for anyone who’s analyzing film and culture, like a great chocolate cake.

When I saw pictures of Pacific Place – which is a shopping mall with a kind of big central basin – the architecture made me think of a fun, lily-pad pool. And my secret desire to work with The Tales of Hoffmann’s dragonfly ballet popped back into my head.

Pacific Place is a very specific site to be installing work and performing – socially, architecturally – although I didn’t quite see the lily-pad pond! 

It’s my mind. What can I do about my mind? 

What will the project look like? What can we expect? 

On the floor, there will be a print of my collages combining watercolor and black-and-white images of people dancing. Sitting on it will be three lanternfly creatures, not exactly anatomically correct but still resembling the real insect, made from sumptuous fabrics in different colors. They have LEDs that will look like a fuzz of light around their noses – which, as I said, isn’t correct. They will reach out to the main lights of the shopping center. 

This installation will be enlivened by performances drawing on two pieces of music: one from The Tales of Hoffmann’s dragonfly ballet, the other from the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen, which features The Little Mermaid ballet performed by Zizi Jeanmaire, the iconic French dancer. The performers in my Lanternfly Ballet are from Hong Kong and will wear glitter catsuits, which will make them look a bit like insects. 

Watching these two movies in preparation for this interview, I was really struck by their campness, their logic of excess, which also characterizes a lot of your work. Is this where you meet? Cinema from that period can feel prim – coquettish even – in a way that is really unlike your practice, but these two are a true visual feast. 

I like the words ‘logic of excess’ and ‘visual feast.’ I’ve survived for 30 years as an artist with a handmade aesthetic and a punk edge – it would be extraordinary if that didn’t come across in Hong Kong. I don’t shy away from exuberance, sumptuousness, and all that. The world is often dusty, grey, and hard; moments of escapism – of Technicolor – are good for morale. I always go back to these very intense desires for high culture, operatic or ballet, in the Wagnerian sense. Who knows what my work would look like if I had the budget and the people? 

This, for me, has to do with the ambition of the work: you want it to be that generous and that bold. What’s more, the visual excess in your pieces – with everything happening all at once – really mirrors your voracious curiosity. In your practice, you are as likely to refer to history as you are to pop culture, cinema, or biology, so the visual abundance of the work echoes the multiplicity of sources that you are drawing from and incorporating into each piece. 

A lot of it has to do with not wanting to dumb things down. I don’t think you have to be art-educated to understand a concept. But my overambitious drive always ends up like the famous Shakespeare quote: when you try to make a tragedy, you make a comedy, and when you try to make a comedy, you make a tragedy. In my work, there’s a horrifyingly sensitive, touching moment when you watch it and realize that someone – me – really wants you to believe in it. People have told me afterwards that they felt like crying. Will it work differently in Hong Kong? I don’t know, but I’m interested to find out. 

You remember when I did the installation of big zorbs on Messeplatz [TEARS, Art Basel in Basel, June 2021]? That was an experiment with public interaction: 5 hours a day in the street with both the general public and art cognoscenti. And it worked! Lanternfly Ballet will hopefully have a similar effect at Pacific Place, engaging people who aren’t there for the art. 

You always give your performers a lot of agency. Will this also be the case in Hong Kong and, if so, could you be surprised by the result? 

I’m a risk-taker. Basically, it’s like cooking: you get your ingredients, you make your preparations, but the outcome is always going to be slightly different. The thing I’m known for, and why I’m given jobs, is that I always get my ingredients together. But, in the end, it’s very experiential and nonverbal. I’m interested in that moment. It is a very collaborative moment: with the performers, with every person in the audience – even with the piece of metal in the installation. It’s entirely open. 

When do you know a project has been successful? 

That’s really simple: when no one has hurt themselves!