
auruBOROS
Urban Memory and Collective Dream
High Line, New York, USA
auruBOROS is a sculpture of two intertwined gold coils that rise from The Standard Hotel and thread through the elevated park of the High Line. Visitors can walk around and beneath the work. Its mirrored surface takes in the buildings, vegetation, sky, and passers-by around it, and changes with sunlight, weather, and time of day. Monumental in scale, the sculpture is physically light and held entirely by air.
The title combines aurum, the Latin word for gold, with ouroboros, the ancient image of the serpent consuming its tail. Opening the traditional closed circle, the artists let the form enter the surrounding architecture as a continuous body threading the horizontal and vertical layers of the site. Drawing on alchemical tradition, they treat the gold surface as a material of transformation.
Air is Plastique Fantastique's medium. It is the material their pneumatic works are made of, and the reason a thirty-metre sculpture can weigh almost nothing. The Greeks had a single word for it, pneuma: breath, air, and spirit at once. It is also the simplest thing we share, passed lungful by lungful between strangers.
Memory is their second medium. Passing auruBOROS, no visitor sees a complete reflection; each shares the image with the strangers beside them. Because the work is temporary, every encounter happens more intensely. When strangers share a place, a moment, and ideas, they begin to imagine the future together. This is what the artists have long called Public Love. When the installation comes down, what remains is the memory of having stood there together, and the collective dream those encounters open. These are the Urban Memory and Collective Dream of the subtitle.
“auruBOROS began with the ancient image of the ouroboros, but instead of keeping the serpent as a closed circle, we opened it and allowed it to enter the city. Its gold, reflective body moves through the High Line, absorbing buildings, vegetation, people, weather, light and sky into its surface. Although it appears monumental, the entire structure exists through air and is temporary. We were interested in that contradiction: something that looks precious and permanent but is actually light, fragile, and transient. For us, the work ultimately becomes less about the object itself and more about the temporary experience it creates, and the memory that remains after it disappears.”
Plastique Fantastique
A public art installation by Marco Canevacci and Yena Young (Plastique Fantastique)
The High Line, Little West 12th Street, New York
On view from September 10th to 20th, 2026.
ABOUT THE ARTWORK
auruBOROS (2026) , 30 × 10 × 10 m, golden mirrored TPU, ventilators.
COMMISSION
auruBOROS by Plastique Fantastique is Bvlgari's first public art commission in the United States and the newest chapter of their Serpenti Infinito art series, following exhibitions in Shanghai (2023), Seoul and Mumbai (2025). This is an independent commission and is not affiliated with High Line Art.
Curatorial Development & Executive Production
Lavinia Freitas
Video
Swan Park
Sound recordings and composition
Pablo Diserens
Special thanks
Brett Fahlgren and Jason Guttilla (Bvlgari Team)
Susan Sellers, Amanda Al-Mahdi, Adriana Gelves, Chris Kupski (2x4 Team)
Robert Meyknecht, Sascha Donitzky, Susanne Behrens (geo - Die Luftwerker Team)
Delaney McDonough (Prodject Team)
The amazing people of New York

PHOTO Ⓒ Swan Park

PHOTO Ⓒ Swan Park
PHOTO Ⓒ Swan Park

PHOTO Ⓒ Marco Canevacci

PHOTO Ⓒ Swan Park

PHOTO Ⓒ Swan Park

PHOTO Ⓒ Swan Park

PHOTO Ⓒ Marco Canevacci

PHOTO Ⓒ Marco Canevacci

PHOTO Ⓒ Marco Canevacci

PHOTO Ⓒ Swan Park

PHOTO Ⓒ Lavinia Freitas

DOUBLE HEART | NOOR RIYADH
NOOR RIYADH Light Art Festival 2025
Qasr Al Hokm Metro Station, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
DOUBLE HEART is an installation that gathers the heartbeats of random people and transforms them into a collective landscape of light and sound. Two visitors sit inside the installation, where their pulses are measured, processed, and reproduced in real time, revealing the endless variability of these rhythmic patterns.
The installation absorbs frequencies and shapes of human bodies and searches for a possible compatibility between strangers and beloved, questioning the match as atonal empathy or natural attraction.
On the occasion of NOOR RIYADH 2025, the Light Art Festival in the Saudi capital, Plastique Fantastique has been invited to present DOUBLE HEART to the public at Qasr Al Hokm Metro Station.
Artist
Marco Canevacci and Yena Young (Plastique Fantastique)
Collaboration with TETRO
Matthieu Debay and Nicolas Roziecki
Curator
Sara Almutlaq, Li Zhenhua, Mami Kataoka
Plastique Fantastique Team
Maria Elenora Ledesma, Salvador Marino, Sebastian Podesta, Valeria Landete, Markus Wüste
Video
Marco Canevacci and Yena Young,
Special thanks
The Noor Riyadh Team
Nouf Almoneef, Marco Barotti, Bruno Bolfo, Matteo Messina
Marco Canevacci and Yena Young (Plastique Fantastique)
Collaboration with TETRO
Matthieu Debay and Nicolas Roziecki
Curator
Sara Almutlaq, Li Zhenhua, Mami Kataoka
Plastique Fantastique Team
Maria Elenora Ledesma, Salvador Marino, Sebastian Podesta, Valeria Landete, Markus Wüste
Video
Marco Canevacci and Yena Young,
Special thanks
The Noor Riyadh Team
Nouf Almoneef, Marco Barotti, Bruno Bolfo, Matteo Messina
All photos ⓒ Plastique Fantastique









30 Million Years Under the Pavilion
Where the permanent meets the temporary in a tapestry of architectural storytelling
Venice Architecture Biennale 2025
Little Toad, Little Toad: Unbuilding Pavilion - Korean Pavilion, Giardini, Venice, Italy
In 2025, the Korean Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale marks its 30th anniversary — a remarkable lifespan for a structure originally intended to be temporary. Beneath this now-permanent architecture, a hidden exhibition will be revealed only when the pavilion is dismantled, offering a quiet meditation on time, visibility, and the archaeology of architecture.
The fossilized remains of a mysterious hominid species, Nanogyna acephala — a small, headless, humanlike being were unearthed in Giardini in 1993. Far from a mere scientific curiosity, Nanogyna challenges accepted narratives of evolution, biology, and communication. With no head, yet rich in sensory and reproductive complexity, it reorients our understanding of where intelligence and life can reside.
Communicating through beeswax spheres and sound vibrations triggered by water, and reproducing via parthenogenesis, Nanogyna offers a symbolic figure for speculative evolution. Its uniquely adapted physiology appears to be shaped by the microclimate and biodiversity of Venice itself — a creature of the margins, born in the transitional space between natural and artificial ecosystems.
Like the pavilion that shelters it, Nanogyna lives in tension between permanence and impermanence, visibility and obscurity. This exhibition transforms the pavilion into an archaeological fiction, inviting visitors to step into a layered narrative — one that blends scientific imagination, evolutionary myth, and architectural memory.
Read Scientific publication about Nanogyna acephala.
Artist:
Yena Young
Scientific Advisory:
Dr. Michael Ohl – Biologist, Natural History Museum of Berlin - Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity; Associate Professor, Humboldt University of Berlin
Dr. Massimo Canevacci – Cultural Anthropologist, Professor, Sapienza University of Rome and University of São Paulo
Dr. Felix Tropf – Genetic Sociologist, Associate Professor, University College London (UCL) and Purdue University
Curators:
CAC (Curating Architecture Collective: Chung Dahyoung, Kim Heejung, Jung Sungkyu)
Commissioner:
Arts Council Korea (ARKO)
Participating Architects/ Artists:
Kim Hyunjong (ATELIER KHJ)
Heechan Park (Studio Heech)
Young Yena (Plastique Fantastique)
Lee Dammy (Flora and Fauna)
Special thanks to:
Marco Canevacci, Eric Engelbracht
Kindly supported by:
Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani (DSZV)







POLYMETER
Sea Art Festival 2025
Dadaepo Beach, Busan, South Korea
In POLYMETER, materials with different temporalities converge in one space.
The outer shell of the work is made from fossil-based polyurethane, while the inner membrane is hand-crafted using locally harvested kelp. This delicate core, sensitive to heat and humidity, may dissolve entirely, revealing the fragility of organic life beneath a synthetic skin.
The two membranes, like two temporalities, never fully align: one fossilised, the other decomposing. Their interplay symbolises the tension and co-existence between synthetic durability and biological impermanence, between fossil capitalism and environmental regeneration.
Positioned at the threshold between land and sea, the sculpture transforms the shoreline into a site of sensorial reflection. It invites a dissonant pause — between breath and rupture, resilience and collapse — where plastic and water intertwine, and the future remains uncertain. (Keumhwa Kim)
Artist
Yena Young & Marco Canevacci (Plastique Fantastique)
Curator
Keumhwa Kim, Bernard Vienat
Plastique Fantastique Team
Sebastian Podesta, Valeria Landete, Maria Eleonora Ledesma, Sarah Müller and Eunsoo Ko
Video
Marco Canevacci, Yena Young, Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon), Lee TaeHoon
Special thanks
Busan Biennale
The Busan Biennale Team and Mina Choi
POLYMETER
Inflatable site-specific installation
6m diameter, 4m height
TPU, kelp, poem
ⓒ Plastique Fantastique
ⓒ Plastique Fantastique

ⓒ Plastique Fantastique

Ⓒ Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon)

Ⓒ Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon)

Ⓒ Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon)

Ⓒ Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon)
Ⓒ Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon)

ⓒ Plastique Fantastique

ⓒ Plastique Fantastique

ⓒ Plastique Fantastique
///
POLYMETER
Sea Art Festival 2025
Dadaepo Beach, Busan, South Korea
In POLYMETER, materials with different temporalities converge in one space.
The outer shell of the work is made from fossil-based polyurethane, while the inner membrane is hand-crafted using locally harvested kelp. This delicate core, sensitive to heat and humidity, may dissolve entirely, revealing the fragility of organic life beneath a synthetic skin.
The two membranes, like two temporalities, never fully align: one fossilised, the other decomposing. Their interplay symbolises the tension and co-existence between synthetic durability and biological impermanence, between fossil capitalism and environmental regeneration.
Positioned at the threshold between land and sea, the sculpture transforms the shoreline into a site of sensorial reflection. It invites a dissonant pause — between breath and rupture, resilience and collapse — where plastic and water intertwine, and the future remains uncertain. (Keumhwa Kim)
Artist
Yena Young & Marco Canevacci (Plastique Fantastique)
Curator
Keumhwa Kim, Bernard Vienat
Plastique Fantastique Team
Sebastian Podesta, Valeria Landete, Maria Eleonora Ledesma, Sarah Müller and Eunsoo Ko
Video
Marco Canevacci, Yena Young, Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon), Lee TaeHoon
Special thanks
Busan Biennale
The Busan Biennale Team and Mina Choi
POLYMETER
Inflatable site-specific installation
6m diameter, 4m height
TPU, kelp, poem

Ⓒ Busan Biennale Organizing Committee (Photo: Changsu Yoon)
BERLINER WEDDING (und Scheidung)
LOVE, LAW and FOREIGN AFFAIRS
A participatory installation by Plastique Fantastique
August 2025, Rathausvorplatz Wedding, Berlin, Germany
Berlin teaches us to love intensely and to let go quickly. The participatory installation Berlin Wedding (und Scheidung / and Divorce) invites visitors to make a temporary promise and playfully explores the dissonances between love and law, emotional bonds and official ties. Along large-scale, ephemeral art installations, strangers, friends, and lovers meet and are guided through a fast-track journey from first infatuation to pop-up weddings and express divorces. Passion meets paragraphs, bureaucracy turns into poetry, and separation becomes a creative rupture.
Concept and Artistic Direction:
Marco Canevacci and Yena Young (Plastique Fantastique)
Dramaturgy and Projection:
Sarah Möller
Performers:
Anna Athanasiou, Miguel Angel Collado Sanchez, Giuliana Corsi, Charline Lebailly, Michele Meloni, Virginnia Ogechi Krämer, Onur Özyurt
Plastique Fantastique Team:
Valeria Landete, Maria Eleonora Ledesma, Sebastian Podesta, Carsten Reith, Markus Wüste
Dj:
Valerie Renay, DJ Problems, DJ Ewigkeit
Production:
Eric Engelbracht
Administration:
Julius Kaftan
Photos:
Konstantin von Sichart, Plastique Fantastique
Video Footage:
Konstantin von Sichart, Plastique Fantastique
Drone Footage:
Hannes Schulze / Kultur Mitte
Video Editing:
Konstantin von Sichart and Alice Dalgalarrondo
Berliner Wedding (und Scheidung) is a collaboration between the Department of Art, Culture and History of the Berlin Mitte District Office, visitBerlin and Plastique Fantastique.
The project is funded by the Senate Department for Economic Affairs, Energy and Public Enterprises of Berlin through grants for “Special Tourist Projects in the Districts”
Photo: Hannes Schulze / Kultur Mitte
Photo: Hannes Schulze / Kultur Mitte
Photo: Hannes Schulze / Kultur Mitte
Photo: Hannes Schulze / Kultur Mitte
Photo: Hannes Schulze / Kultur Mitte

Photo: Plastique Fantastique

Photo: Plastique Fantastique

Photo: Plastique Fantastique

Photo: Plastique Fantastique

Photo: Hannes Schulze / Kultur Mitte

Photo: Plastique Fantastique
Photo: Plastique Fantastique
