Monster Chetwynd’s
Salamander Website Monster Chetwynd’s Salamander Website (2026) has 3 huge, fuschia salamanders crawling across its arc. Their cushioned toes cling onto a monolithic ring of what looks like to be engraved stone bring heavy water marks at the on set of humidity. It looks like if the arc was there for a long time, or at the minimum, pulled out of a Tomb Raider movie. Their big shiners consider those who go into and leave the website. It conjures up Julio Cortázar’s experience discussing the eyes on an axolotl, a very ancient looking kind of salamander, writing that their eyes, “spoke to me of the existence of a different life, of another way of seeing.”
Monster Chetwynd, Salamander Portal, 2026. Exhibition view of A GOOD FRIENDS MAKING MACHINE at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photography: Tom Cornille.
As visitors travel through Chetwynd’s website, looked over by those neon guards, they discover 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 outdoor museums. This east gate functions as an entryway to the park, linking the group of artistic works inside to the greater community of regional citizens, patients from the ZAS Middelheim health center and UKJA centre for kid and adolescent psychiatry, and students from the University of Antwerp.
Monster Chetwynd at her exhibition, A Pals Making Device, at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photography: Tom Cornille.
A BUDDIES MAKING MACHINEat Middleheim Museum sculpture garden
This work, a commission from the Middleheim Museum and now an irreversible part of their collection, belongs to a bigger solo exhibit of Chetwynd’s work, A FRIENDS MAKING DEVICE which runs from May 16th– October 11th 2026. Within the program, the former Turner Prize nominee transforms the area into a meeting ground and an area for dialogue with its program of performances, workshops, and film screenings. Creatures, personas, and stories will trigger Chetwynd’s pieces through the duration of the occasion.
Beast Chetwynd, Proscenium Arches, 2026. Exhibit view of A BUDDIES MAKING MACHINE at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photography: Tom Cornille.
Together With Salamander Website are a giant, picturesque sculptures inviting mythmaking, a leisure amble, and squinting looks attempting to figure out what is that? One of which is Proscenium Arch ( 2026 ), a series of arches built in a collage-like style that recalls the artists relationship to theater and efficiency. In one, a salamander seems to have apparated from the place of his pink siblings and onto this collaged scene. Instead, this little animal is glossy and red with a swath of black dots. He’s a bit more ominous, especially seeing that he sits listed below the image of a fine girl, depicted as a majestic bust with streaming hair, yet her nose has been gotten rid of. All that exists is an open, 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 infant moles simply a couple of days after their birth. They are naked and covered in wrinkles of flesh.
Beast Chetwynd, Proscenium Arches, 2026. Exhibit view of A GOOD FRIENDS MAKING MAKER at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photography: Tom Cornille.
collaged arches and Chetwynd’s scenic story informing
The whole scene is ridiculous, however in the marrying of these images, a story emerges. Just like the three rosy siblings that opened the program, Proscenium Arch serves a collection of images, cut and pasted together, in a way that invites a pen and paper, a chat between buddies, or a thrilling examination into why these images, why here, why now. It seems like an invitation to play a game Idea with Chetwynd’s crops as evidence and character, while lounging on a sunny day on these grassy grounds in Antwerp.
Beast Chetwynd, Hellmouth 5, 2026. Exhibit view of A BUDDIES 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, however it’s now blue-green and anthropomorphic. To go into this arch, one must ender the mouth of a monster. Its cushioned upper lip appears like a lion’s and its large round 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 employs a prince to save her child from the clutches of evil. Chetwynd’s work positions a similar boundary in between the excellent and the menacing. It has an open jaw and ears that shoot up, alert, eyebrows that being in a threatening V-shape, yet there’s a specific cartoonishness about it that makes it nearly silly, a goofy bad guy from a fable.
Monster Chetwynd, Tears, 2021. Exhibition view of A PALS MAKING MAKER at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photography: Tom Cornille.
zorbs and tears and human feelings
Finally, there’s the melancholic Tears ( 2021 ), a group of Zorbs, the inflateable plastic human-sized hamster balls. One can select to get in and spin around inside these little worlds, or they can search to the bumping treasure trove. The Zorbs are said to represent tears, triggering a conversation on how we communicate with (or avoid) natural human emotions. Together, A PALS MAKING MAKER serves as a threshold into the stretching Antwerp garden. It teases the line in between the real and the pictured and, when experienced with buddies (or prospective friends-to-be), there’s a certain magic that grows for the seeds of imagination that Chetwynd sprays throughout the gardens.
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Beast Chetwynd, Tears, 2021. Exhibit view of A GOOD FRIENDS MAKING Device at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photography: Tom Cornille.
< img data-src="https://www.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/3.-_Tears_-2021-818x545.jpg" width="818" height="545" alt="Beast Chetwynd, Tears, 2021. Exhibition view of A FRIENDS MAKING Maker at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photography: Tom Cornille." src="https://www.designboom.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/3.-_Tears_-2021-818x545.jpg"/ > Monster Chetwynd, Tears, 2021. Exhibition view of A FRIENDS MAKING Maker at Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photography: Tom Cornille.