Open the Box 2026: Pleasant Place with Ryan Villamael

A quiet garden,

a floating island,

a hidden nest,

a place that lives on in memory.

Open the Box 2026: Pleasant Place with Ryan Villamael is a slow-growing, participatory programme. Participants of all ages are invited to co-create a paper canopy that evolves over time – formed by multi-level suspended clusters that together become a shared, collective landscape.

Pleasant Place belongs to the Filipino artist Ryan Villamael's ongoing Locus Amoenus series. In Latin, locus amoenus describes a "pleasant place" – a dreamlike pastoral landscape of refuge, abundance and harmony. This series explores history and collective memory, looking at the interpenetrating layers that constitute a locality and the invisible threads that connect us to it.

Participants are invited to wander through this immersive, forest-like environment, moving beneath and around floating foliage while actively contributing to the work's growth. Through workshops, they will create clusters of leaves, vines or abstract terrain fragments, assembling small landscapes that reflect their own interpretation of a "pleasant place."

It is a shared refuge shaped by many hands – a network of stories connected by migration and ideas of belonging.


On Open the Box
Open the Box is an innovative programme that takes place every summer at Tai Kwun Contemporary, exploring alternative and innovative approaches to community engagement and shaping the future of museums. Gallery and white cube spaces are typically platforms for curators' and artists' creativity. But during this special event, the roles will be reversed – the gallery will feature collective works created by artists, visitors and participants.

More Details: https://www.taikwun.hk/en/programme/detail/open-the-box-2026-ryan-villamael/1777

Remarks:
- Please register and pay in advance online. Each activity timeslot is 90 minutes.
- The programme welcomes children aged 5 or above, accompanied by a parent or guardian. Children aged 12 or below must be accompanied by one parent or guardian.
- Admission tickets are required for the co-creation period. Daily quotas are limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.
- Ticket sales end 30 minutes before the start of each session. Latecomers arriving more than 30 minutes after the session begins will not be admitted.
- Participants will be given priority access to attend the closing ceremony on 2 Aug.