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    September 1, 2024

    Art & Design

    Behind the scenes: Cindy Chao’s Meld in Light and Shade exhibition

    Celebrating her 2023 Annual Butterfly, Cindy Chao collaborated with renowned Dutch architect Tom Postma for an awe-inspiring installation in Shanghai

    For Cindy Chao, the artistry doesn’t stop at the art jewel itself. It’s about the storytelling, the anticipation, the experience. The unveiling of the Annual Butterfly, the 2023 Black Label Masterpiece I Amour Butterfly Brooch, in Shanghai in September 2023 perfectly encapsulated this philosophy, with the artist collaborating with internationally renowned architect Tom Postma to create a space befitting of such a masterpiece.

    The Annual Butterfly was a concept first conceived by Chao in 2008 – a piece that symbolises her ongoing metamorphosis as an artist, her advancements in technique and boundary-pushing craftsmanship. Shaped as a butterfly that takes at least 18 months to complete, each of the 10 sculptural brooches created over the years boasts intense intricacy, whimsical colours and meticulously set stones.

    Chao chose to spotlight this one single piece in the presentation, allowing visitors to experience up close the skill, precision and creativity that goes into every detail. Taking artisan craftsman more than 15,000 hours to make, the out-stretched, intertwined titanium wings of the butterfly dazzle with Colombian emeralds, a rainbow of diamonds, aquamarines, sapphires, demantoid garnets and tsavorites. A motif central to her design philosophy, Chao says, “The butterfly has always inspired me; you don’t live for long, but you live brightly, beautifully. They also represent me, an artist’s transformation.”

    Michelle Yeoh and the levitating Amour Butterfly.

    Titled Meld in Light and Shade, the exhibition was staged at the Long Museum West Bund in Shanghai, specifically chosen by Chao. Captivated by the impact of the sun’s rays that illuminated the hall’s open space, she saw an opportunity to mirror the interplay of light and shadow that influenced the Amour Butterfly itself. Postma, the creative mind behind the space’s design, explains, “There’s a beautiful contrast here. What you see is this strong, physical building; concrete versus the delicate art pieces.”

    The result was an immersive artistic experience, where more than 1,000 handcrafted butterflies fluttered overhead, guiding the visitor through the artist’s creative process to illustrate the dedication and challenges involved in the masterpiece’s creation. Here an arboretum of trees suspend a dazzling array of butterfly cocoons, each tinted in a spectrum of spring colours. Taking cues from pointism paintings, they appear pixelated and surreal, imbuing a sense of Chao’s fantastical imagination that transcends reality.

    Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai

    Light and shadow at play within the exhibition space

    Chao explains, “We were trying to sculpt this installation piece that’s nothing to do with the jewellery, but so connected to the transformation of a butterfly, and it’s a growing journey as well: the way I reflect my experiences, my transcendence.” A rhythm of colour that plays to the inherent theme of nature, the eye was drawn to a curtain-covered viewing point, where the Amour Butterfly awaited the beholder.

    Of the collaboration, Postma said, “[Chao] is a sculptor, she comes from an architectural background. I’m a sculptor too, so we speak the same language, and I think we managed to create this journey through all kinds of objects and installations that slowly gets into Cindy’s mind and how this piece is created. We step by step go into the story that’s told by the artist, then you finally come to the end product, the apotheosis.”

    Cindy Chao and architect Tom Postma

    A levitating display case houses the Amour Butterfly

    To present the Amour Butterfly Brooch’s light and dynamic beauty, highlight its vitality, and showcase the unique 360-degree three-dimensionality, Chao and Postma boldly collaborated to create a levitating display case, with the longest floating path in the world. Seemingly floating, the work of art glistened from within an ingenious glass system, created from custom-made museum-calibre glass with a reflectivity of only 1%, allowing an unobstructed view of its exquisite details. Developed by an international team of experts who combine state-of-the-art technology with optical illusion art, the lighting perfectly complemented the organic, undulating nature of the piece, and allowed it to suspend effortlessly in its environment.

    Allowing the ineffable intricacy of the piece to be viewed as if in a modern museum, this offered an opportunity to see each scintillating stone of the Amour Butterfly up close, where the waiting list for Chao’s Annual Butterfly Brooch now reaches the year 2028.