Sacred Salamanders, Regeneration, and Reconnection with our Monstrous Mother Nature. In Conversation with the Artist Monster Chetwynd.

The maverick and marvellous artist Monster Chetwynd is known for her joyous and carnivalesque projects, which straddle the borders of sculpture, live performance, collage and painting, spinning communal experiences through a blend of the natural sciences, folk tradition, and the surreal. 

London-born and now based in Zürich, Chetwynd is an embodiment of her experimental philosophy, trading her birthname Alalia for Spartacus in 2006, switching to Marvin Gaye in 2013, before adopting Monster as her preferred sojourn since 2018. 

If this skittish moniker-shifting is anything to go by, it should come as little surprise that the rejuvenating properties of the salamander, its ability to mutate and regenerate, sparked interest in the 2012 Turner-prize nominated artist. This amphibian is the central focus of Chetwynd’s first upcoming outdoor solo exhibition and new permanent commission this spring, joining a roster of underdogs of the natural world that anchor her research interests. In the winter of 2018-2019, it was a pair of endearing bioluminescent leopard slugs, which wet the façade of the Tate Britain; sloppy brutes caressing the cold exterior with their azure love trails. Known for their elaborate mating rituals, these hermaphroditic creatures contradict humankind’s understanding of intimacy and reproduction. 

Then a flurry of moths, bats and velvet worms pranced the corridors of Vienna’s Belvedere Museum from November 2024 to February 2025, muttering stories of heretics and wilful women once scorned with fury and hairy flutter. Beyond playfulness, however, Chetwynd rewires our entrenched societal norms, questioning our role and responsibility in the ecosystem, and encourages us to work towards a more creative, curious and caring world. 

A Friends Making Machine, opening at the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, Belgium, on May 16, 2026, encourages patients of the neighbouring UKJA young people’s and children’s mental health hospital and the public to connect with the healing properties of the 75-year-old open-air sculptural park. Ahead of its opening, Monster spills the details of this exciting new feat, the depths of her practice, and the inspirations propelling her community-driven works.

Maggie Kuzan: A Friends Making Machine is your first solo outdoor show, is that right?

Monster Chetwynd: Yes. It’s like a mini festival. It has lots of different performances and two different big dates, and it goes on the whole summer. And there’s the permanent work as well. It’s the first time I’ve done a lot like that. There’s the outdoor show, but it feels like a little mini festival. 

MK: I think it ties in with your playfulness as an artist.

MC: Hopefully, I don’t get burnt out of my playfulness, but it’s all wonderful and with a lightness of touch.

MK: Could you tell us the origins of your curiously-titled show? Who are the ‘friends’ and what is the ‘machine’ in A Friends Making Machine?

MC: It comes from the organic phrase that came from the performance group. For a long time, I’ve been making these fun happenings or events. Very simply, the people who are in the performance have a very bonded experience. And then, because it’s so bonded and enjoyable, when they see each other outside of the moment that they met, they have another ability to feel connected. So, it builds. We were jokingly saying it was like a friend’s making machine. It was just really fun that you didn’t even understand it, but you’re making these quite meaningful connections. 

I intentionally wanted the work (from its first initial effort as domestic parties) to be that people were bonded. When I’ve heard people talking about ‘the friends-making machine,’ I was very much saying affirmations. I was doing a little sort of experiments (which sound a bit sinister when I explained them). Concepts and strategies to bond communities, I learned from studying history and anthropology. So, then little by little, this experiment has become exactly that, ‘the friends-making machine.’ 

There’s one friend in particular called Guillaume Vandame, who wrote a lot about it and wanted to analyse a big kind of family tree where people met. Even more funny, dark and naughty. I watched Tiger King on TV and was dying laughing about the woman who runs the tiger sanctuary. She doesn’t pay the people who work for her, but has all these horrifyingly clever control mechanisms with coloured T-shirts. 

I was joking with my group that we could have coloured T-shirts according to how long someone’s been working with me in the performances. And we were laughing so much about it, to exaggerate the ‘self-conscious, happy! We’re so pleased with ourselves; we’re making friends with everyone.’ It’s also just to be cheeky to ourselves, to be self-irreverent. But yeah, it’s great fun, like a humorous cleverness and if only it took over the whole world.

MK: There’s a touch of the macabre as well. Subverting the idea of a cult in a way.

MC: I guess the test of loyalty is drinking the poisoned orange juice of Jim Jones. I’ve researched a lot of these aspects. It’s really fascinating, but to answer you very simply, it’s more fun, light and silly. It happens naturally, and then before you know it, you’re incredibly bonded. And the next time you see that person, you can’t wait to cross the room to chat to them about what happened.

MK: When did you receive the news of the commission for this exhibition?

MC: I answered an open call for a permanent sculpture in the park. It’s very interestingly next to a children’s mental health hospital with no access to the park. There is literally a very thin fence, but the people who are working at the mental health hospital have to drive forty minutes to get into the park. The clever people who run both the hospital and the sculpture park team together applied to the Stadt, the local authorities, to make a gateway so that the children and the people working at the mental hospital can walk directly into it. So they did an open call for artists to design the gate, and I applied. 

I made a fun proposal, like a doughnut ring, and it has lots of patterns in it, so it feels as if it could almost become dynamically activated to time travel. I made temple cats, but instead of cats, I was working with the idea of salamanders. They [the mental health hospital representatives] loved the salamander idea because they really regenerate. They make their body parts again, even their organs, apparently even a brain (!). 

Middelheim knew me from another project before. They immediately liked my attitude, and they understood that I would design this permanent sculpture with them. They realised they could invite me to do the summer show too. It envelopes it quite well. It complements the permanent sculpture to have the summer show by the same artist.

MK: I would love to know a little bit more about your proposal for the gate.

MC: It’s called the Salamander portal. It’s like a science fiction circle with rather beautiful details in stone. I went to the quarry to select the stone. I have planned the design carefully in parametric software, and we have had 2 meetings with the stone masons. The salamanders should be cast in jesmonite. Do you know what I mean by terrazzo floor when it has flecks in it? 

I do find a lot of animals and creatures that seem to be underdogs very adorable. Salamanders, I find amazing. The red and yellow ones are so sweet and black and yellow. And I like axolotls. I’m a bit of a sucker for them.

MK: There is a lot of performance, ceremony, and ritual in your practice. Will you be initiating the opening somehow?

MC: We have a really playfully absurd performance of salamanders with a band and then people dressed up as them. We talk about the different abilities that they can manage in life. If a salamander is eaten by a predator, the toxins in the skin make the predator vomit it out. But what’s so incredible is the salamander has the ability to shut its body down inside the animal that’s the predator’s body, and it doesn’t die. There’s a lot of sneaky learning. 

There’s a lot of factual information in the performance that’s just goofy and really wild. We’ve The Iron Age Pasta Necklace Workshop – a very exciting workshop that goes on forever and has a Discerning Eye that’s a very powerful figure [earlier iterations of The Iron Age Pasta Necklace Workshop were conceived at RCA Masters in curation 2003, also at Studio Voltaire, London, 2014, Bergen assembly 2016 and so on]. We will also be performing this very glittery, wonderful one called Tears (2021) – glittery because people have catsuits with diamonds all over them. There are beautiful baubles that you can roll around in that look a little bit like Hieronymous Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. It’s very peaceful and uplifting and balletic.

I like your question that it’s not that I’m so artfully making a spell where I know that the portal will open and something will be like “Ka Shazam”, it’s more that I can imagine the experience of people being quietly sort of delighted or inspired by seeing something or laughing at something to build into being a good and buoyant feeling, which is, I think, the aim. I’m not there with a kind of stick or anything. 

MK: It’s also the viewer’s duty, in a way.

MC: Yes, they contribute totally. Hopefully.

MK: You are known for being playful or experimental when it comes to the materials you use. Were there any limitations in terms of which materials you could use for this commission? 

MC: Absolutely. I will sacrifice various works for the ambition of the outdoor exhibition. I either have to choose to work with harder, more durable materials, or I sacrifice the work that I make, and we will see how it goes. The slugs are made of jute, which is like hessian. Obviously, a bit of metal is going in there. Some things are inappropriate, and they’re going to deteriorate. 

The stone Salamander portal will last, and the performance is very much popping up for the opening and then disappearing. The elements that are staying there are meant to be performative to a sort of low-energy degree. There are some arches and an interactive bench. These are made with more permanent materials. Some of the works were originally designed to be outside in a city piazza.

I will sacrifice various works for the ambition of the outdoor exhibition. I either have to choose to work with harder, more durable materials, or I sacrifice the work that I make, and we will see how it goes.

MK: With your anthropological background research into social histories, how much has the local area of Antwerp informed this project? 

MC: This, I would hilariously say, is zero. Middelheim is a beautiful park. Like, obviously, London’s Hyde Park, which provides a hiatus in the city. It’s a place that you can go to for recreation. It’s relaxing. It’s somewhere that has incredible trees that make you feel and think differently. Middelheim has really beautifully overgrown sections and areas with a lot of flat grass that feel very safe. A lot of people, I notice, come with their bikes and just flop onto deck chairs. So, the work I’m making in my mind is actually abstract from history; it’s taken away because the whole aspect of the park is the hiatus.

When I make the performances there, I’m more thinking of Watteau’s paintings. When the actors are outside of the theatre, and they’re performing in the park or the jardin public. It’s not that I’m trying to research Antwerp’s history; it’s sort of the opposite. I’m trying to tap into the (almost universal) connection with people’s idea of providing a garden within a city. And, I just feel confident with that. Maybe it’s natural arrogance. But for some reason, I feel so confident with this logic.

MK: It’s a communal experience. It’s a feeling, a shared affect, like you said, a moment of disconnection and being able to switch off.

MC: I’ve lived in many places, for example, Nice on the Côte d’Azur, which has this seriously painful beach with pebbles that kill you. But what I found so beautiful about it was that people of all walks of life use it as a recreation area. Everyone goes there to have a beer or just sit. It’s the same thing with parks. There’s this aspect of sharing that seems to work.

The irony is that we’re looking at the new post-human effort to not be unaware that you’re an animal yourself. We’re looking at the moles, the bats, the moths, and all the enjoyment of that, rather than feeling that we’re not connected. You sort of feel a bit more connected to the fungi, hopefully in a good way.

MK: It’s wonderful. It’s a democratic space where all bodies, all beings, are.

MC:  It’s complete. The Et in Arcadia ego this calm contemplative moment. Death is present in paradise, but also the aspiration to paradise. It’s like this dream, isn’t it? You slightly dream that it’s possible to have these collective moments of harmony or segue, such as Watteau’s actors away from the stage, but I don’t want to say that we’re achieving it, but we’re going to have a go.

MK: Aside from the portal in the summer exhibition, what are the other elements visitors can expect?

MC: We know at this stage, there are four four- or five-metre-tall proscenium arches. Similar to an exploded theatre with this entrance arch, they’re very highly shaped, colourful, and decorative. In the same way as the Watteau painting ‘fête galante’, I wanted to bring the idea of the audience interacting.

My collages are non-verbal communication of these ideas. The glamour of some of the natural phenomena.  Then there’s a natural tunnel in the park between two massive trees, a thinner corridor of space in the area that I will exhibit a hell mouth, Hell Mouth 5 (2025 Tate Modern Turbine Hall). It is inspired by Bomarzo, and it is romantic in an old-fashioned sense.

Through this, you get to another area where there’s a very dignified, massive wooden bench that, if you ever were to get a bird’s eye view of, is linked to Salvador Dalí’s jewellery of an eye with a tear. Dalí did lots of jewellery (that I go bananas about). I’ve been to Figueres three times, and I love his eccentricity enmeshed in this technically skilled jewellery. They’re so beautiful. And this one is an eye made of encrusted diamonds. And then the pupil is a clock, and it’s blue, and then there’s a little tear  [as seen in the well-circulated 1959 black and white photograph of Madelle Hegler modelling the brooch].

I used it as the shape of the bench. There are rather vulgar Zorbs, which are spheres in double-insulated plastic that you can inflate and roll around on. When you look from above, the balls rolling around look like tears. It’s a very big piece, 40 meters across at least, and it fits really well in this back part that’s a bit more enclosed. Dan Graham’s permanent sculpture is there alongside other elements in the park. When you go through it, there’s another kind of funny path that goes through a quite dense, forest-like part, to get to the portal. We’ve made an effort to make an organic completion, to walk a journey.

I am exhibiting a combination of existing works that could be appropriate for outdoors or at least last the four months outside, exposed to weather. They’re handmade. They are handcrafted and almost a bit fuzzy. Peter, who’s the curator, was very clear about the audience enjoying the sculptures being static, and the audience can interact with them.

MK: What are some monsters that are inspiring you at the moment? 

MC:  I revisited the French artist JJ Grandville recently. They’re so intense. They’re often two animals, hybrid together, but both heads. And I find them great. They are really interesting. I am naturally drawn to some sort of monstrosities, but I don’t actually think they’re monstrous. I just think they’re intriguing. I’m not scared of the bad taste or the grotesque.

MK: Aliens or freaks in nature… luminescent slugs and moths.

MC: I love them totally. I have a book on moths, and they have images of the caterpillars before they become the moths to show the incredible difference in the transformation. They’re exquisite. Some of them look like sea cucumbers, multi-coloured, and then other ones are so hairy. They’re like ‘cousin itt’. The caterpillars have bouffant-like hairdos, combed in a certain direction. Oh my God. They’re so heartrending!

I wonder whether they link to different cultures. They are ludicrously silly-looking. They’re not elegant, they just look funny. The velvet worm is also incredible. I came across it through David Attenborough’s Life in the Undergrowth. It squirts its prey with glue, which it then efficiently eats. It’s to do with ejaculation and conception. Octavia Butler’s Adulthood Rites describes alien creatures, the Oankali, who feel very much like velvet worms. There are aspects of culture where you’ve read something, and then you see something, and your brain starts to file the information together. That’s why I am happy and curious about that world of monsters.

MK: What else is informing you at the moment?

MC: I’m reading Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and the one thing that really hits home is the bioluminescence. I made the slugs at the Tate Britain for exactly that reason. When slugs have sex, they make incredible glowing bioluminescence.

Captain Nemo’s Nautilus and the whole description of the electric light visually take over your mind – the aqua lung is described, and you think of Jacques Cousteau, 1910-1997, and Jules Verne, who was writing in 1869. They [Professor Pierre Aronnax, his servant Conseil, and the Canadian harpooner Ned Land] are prisoners, so it’s a very complicated relationship. At the same time, there’s the uplifting desire for people to be intelligent with science and to appreciate the natural environment on a really clever level. Also, I think I’ve got a crush on Captain Nemo.

MK: What are the main lessons that you feel you receive from the natural world?

MC:  It’s tricky because in a weird way, the artifice of the park doesn’t really represent nature, does it? Nature’s more the classic Werner Herzog quote of “chaos, violence and murder” [quote from My Best Fiend, 1999]. The relationship with the park is cushioned. And then also there’s the quite funny unstoppable penetration of the moles making all the mole hills throughout the park, naughtily digging up the grass everywhere. Not ideal, and now the park embraces them. It’s a tricky one. We can learn from all of these incredible networks that exist between fungi and trees, but we just seem to dominate, don’t we?

MK: There’s a spontaneity, unpredictability to nature…

MC: Mischief.

We can learn from all of these incredible networks that exist between fungi and trees, but we just seem to dominate, don’t we?

MK: And then there is the societal sort of sanitisation of nature that the park symbolises – its construction.

MC: I love romantic British gardens, to be honest. But it’s a dilemma. In all my Green Politics research, it’s nearly impossible not to be hypocritical. You try your hardest to investigate something, and I slightly managed to disarm people through many distractions and playfulness, to then approach serious subjects. I’ve got that ability, but I’m not sure about the superior edge ever, because you always end up somehow being hypocritical. We’re being so clever in the park, but actually, the park is artificial.

MK: I think this is the contemporary conundrum we were discussing right at the very beginning of our conversation. Now we have this awareness. The discourse has sort of shifted towards species relations. 

MC: Totally. When I talk to the young people I’m coming into contact with teaching, the ones who are really switched on are entirely connected to slime moulds and all cleverness. They are really well informed. I am a very positive person, and I’m guessing that humans have the ability to learn from these different forms of intelligence and leapfrog forward.

I’ve voted Green all my life, and I have been waiting for breakthroughs such as the reusable cable tie, the starch-based plastic spoon and coffee lid. I’ve been waiting literally twenty years for them, having seen them in the Natural History Museum in London in the plastics displays. I have been waiting for them to hit mainstream consumer markets.

It’s the same curiosity and empirical science that causes us to have faith in humans’ ability. The performances I make happen are not preaching or lecturing, but they’re more of a hiatus, like the park. 

It’s the same curiosity and empirical science that causes us to have faith in humans’ ability. The performances I make happen are not preaching or lecturing, but they’re more of a hiatus, like the park.

Monster Chetwynd: A Friends Making Machine opens to the public on May 16 and runs until October 11, 2026, at the Middelheim Museum in Antwerp, Belgium.