The grid: Rong Bao’s otherworldly sculptures

Killian Fox

The Chinese artist’s otherworldly inflatable sculptures provide close encounters of the surrealist kind

If you wandered past the windows of Selfridges earlier this summer, you might have noticed some alien lifeforms lurking behind the glass: brightly coloured entities with glossy bodies sending tendrils into the air, as if observing passersby with curiosity. These were the creations of Chinese artist Rong Bao, an award-winning Royal College of Art alumnus whose work playfully constructs “a surreal interpretation of the world”, as she puts it.

For all their otherworldly qualities and the materials used to make them, including PVC, silicone-coated fabrics and nylon mesh, Bao’s inflatable sculptures – which can be seen on her website and Instagram – have an unexpectedly endearing appearance, evoking jellies, burgers and cupcakes, as well as creatures from the darkest depths of our imaginations.