monster chetwynd’s pink salamanders create a playful portal to another world in antwerp
Monster Chetwynd’s Salamander Portal
Monster Chetwynd’s Salamander Portal (2026) has three massive, fuschia salamanders crawling across its arc. Their padded toes cling onto a monolithic ring of what looks like to be inscribed stone carrying heavy water marks at the on set of humidity. It appears as if the arc was there for a very long time, or at the very least, pulled out of a Tomb Raider film. Their large black eyes look upon those who enter and exit the portal. It invokes Julio Cortázar’s experience writing about the eyes on an axolotl, a very ancient looking type of salamander, writing that their eyes, “spoke to me of the presence of a different life, of another way of seeing.”
Monster Chetwynd, Salamander Portal, 2026. Exhibition view of A FRIENDS MAKING MACHINE at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photography: Tom Cornille.
As visitors pass through Chetwynd’s portal, looked over by those neon guards, they find themselves in a meeting point in the Middelheim Museum’ s sculpture park. Located in Antwerp, Belgium, the site is one of the world’s oldest open-air museums. This east gate serves as an entrance to the park, connecting the group of artistic works inside to the greater community of local residents, patients from the ZAS Middelheim hospital and UKJA centre for child and adolescent psychiatry, and students from the University of Antwerp.
Monster Chetwynd at her exhibition, A Friends Making Machine, at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photography: Tom Cornille.
A FRIENDS MAKING MACHINE at Middleheim Museum sculpture garden
This work, a commission from the Middleheim Museum and now a permanent part of their collection, is part of a bigger solo exhibition of Chetwynd’s work, A FRIENDS MAKING MACHINE which runs from May 16th – October 11th 2026. Within the show, the former Turner Prize nominee transforms the space into a meeting ground and a space for dialogue with its program of performances, workshops, and film screenings. Creatures, personas, and stories will activate Chetwynd’s pieces through the duration of the event.
Monster Chetwynd, Proscenium Arches, 2026. Exhibition view of A FRIENDS MAKING MACHINE at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photography: Tom Cornille.
Alongside Salamander Portal are a giant, scenic sculptures welcoming mythmaking, a leisure amble, and squinting glances trying to figure out what is that? One of which is Proscenium Arch (2026), a series of arches constructed in a collage-like style that recalls the artists relationship to theater and performance. In one, a salamander seems to have apparated from the locale of his pink brothers and onto this collaged scene. Instead, this little creature is glossy and red with a swath of black dots. He’s a bit more sinister, especially seeing that he sits below the image of a fine lady, depicted as a stately bust with flowing hair, yet her nose has been removed. All that’s there is a gaping, skull-like cavity. Another elegant woman in lace-adorned robes stands headless across from her. Above, this scene of missing limbs and decapitation is met with a full-color, grainy image of what looks to be writhing and eyeless baby moles just a few days after their birth. They are naked and covered in wrinkles of flesh.
Monster Chetwynd, Proscenium Arches, 2026. Exhibition view of A FRIENDS MAKING MACHINE at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photography: Tom Cornille.
collaged arches and Chetwynd’s scenic story telling
The whole scene is absurd, but in the marrying of these images, a story emerges. Just like the three rosy brothers that opened the show, Proscenium Arch serves a collection of images, cut and pasted together, in a way that invites a pen and paper, a chat between friends, or a thrilling investigation into why these images, why here, why now. It feels like an invitation to play a game Clue with Chetwynd’s crops as evidence and character, while lounging on a sunny day on these grassy grounds in Antwerp.
Monster Chetwynd, Hellmouth 5, 2026. Exhibition view of A FRIENDS MAKING MACHINE at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photography: Tom Cornille.
In another corner sits Hellmouth 5 (2026), another towering piece one can pass under, through, or around, but it’s now turquoise and anthropomorphic. To go into this arch, one must ender the mouth of a beast. Its padded upper lip looks like a lion’s and its large spherical eyes peer down from above. The work started from Ingmar Bergman’s 1975 film adaptation of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, or Die Zauberflöte (1791). In the film, the Queen of the Night enlists a prince to save her daughter from the clutches of evil. Chetwynd’s work poses a similar boundary between the good and the menacing. It has an open jaw and ears that shoot up, alert, eyebrows that sit in a threatening V-shape, yet there’s a certain cartoonishness about it that makes it almost silly, a goofy villain from a fable.
Monster Chetwynd, Tears, 2021. Exhibition view of A FRIENDS MAKING MACHINE at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photography: Tom Cornille.
zorbs and tears and human emotions
Finally, there’s the melancholic Tears (2021), a group of Zorbs, the inflateable plastic human-sized hamster balls. One can choose to get in and spin around inside these little worlds, or they can look on to the bumping bonanza. The Zorbs are said to represent tears, prompting a conversation on how we interact with (or avoid) natural human emotions. Together, A FRIENDS MAKING MACHINE serves as a threshold into the sprawling Antwerp garden. It teases the line between the real and the imagined and, when experienced with friends (or potential friends-to-be), there’s a certain magic that sprouts for the seeds of creativity that Chetwynd sprinkles across the gardens.
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