“Rainbow City” was presented alongside Paper Magazine and Pharrell Williams for ABMB.
“Rainbow City” was a forty-piece collection of mutable, inflatable sculptures that became an environmental installation addressing the potency of interaction, ritual, and play. Originally commissioned by Luminato Festival of the Arts in Toronto and inspired by the Hindu festival “Holi”, we fabricated the sculptures from intensely colored and receptive materials and encouraged visitors to be active and explore, inventing their own rituals. The individual structures were simple, minimal forms that borrowed aesthetics from toy-like geometry and design. The structures towered over guests, as each element’s height ranges from ten to forty feet. By dwarfing the audience, the totemic pieces triggered a sense of reverence, like the visual of a monolithic monument. During performance, the inflated sculptures “embraced” visitors, while repetitive sound elements further enhanced the sensory experience. The overall installation created a surreal landscape of psychedelic scenery intended to simultaneously provoke a religious and childlike awareness. “Rainbow City” was visited by an estimated 20,000 people over the course of five days.
