Rong Bao’s bizarre inflatable sculptures imagine new kinds of life

Selfridges, the UK’s beloved department store chain, is wondering what life will look like after humans. In a new slew of commissioned works from emerging artists, it has fixated around themes of milestones, mistakes, epiphanies and new directions, but with sculptor and painter Rong Bao’s bizarre inflatable work in Selfridges’ window installation, a goopy vision of a new life is front and centre at the London flagship store’s Orchard Street entrance. Her work is alien and fun – larger than life, site-specific inflatable sculptures that look like blown-up microbes or gunky life forms. “Much of my work addresses the tension between the mechanical and the organic, especially under systems of control, labor, and knowledge,” says Rong. Inspired by Taoist cosmology, speculative sci-fi and dysfunctional design, she creates these weirdo lifeforms on a small scale with soft clay or plastic tubes, then works with 3D printers to maximise their size.

When prompted with the word “wisdom” from Selfridges, Rong envisioned a super-brain-like organism quietly arriving on Earth, not to teach or conquer, but simply to observe. “The work plays with the absurdity of how humans define wisdom,” says Rong. “By offering a silent, motionless response instead.” What are we looking at exactly? Whereas other artists in Selfridges’ campaign pinpoint specific moments in human life, Rong may be offering the post-human, a gelatinous and ambiguous shape that recalls 80s movie ooze instead. Oscillating between playfulness and poetic symbolism, these works sit in an unique valley between child friendliness and body horror – just the kind of challenging and mischievous public art that more companies need. “It’s part parody, part speculation,” says Rong. “An absurdist homage to the human desire for meaning in an increasingly incomprehensible world.”