Chetwynd’s monster pink salamanders create a playful portal to another world in Antwerp Chetwynd’s monster pink salamanders in Antwerp

Monster Chetwynd’s Salamander Gate

Monster Chetwynd’s Salamander Gate (2026) has three massive, fuchsia salamanders crawling across its bow. Their padded toes cling to a monolithic ring of what looks like an inscribed stone bearing heavy water marks at the point of dampness. It looks like the bow was there for a very long time, or at least, taken out of one Tomb Raider film. Their big black eyes look at those who enter and exit the gate. He cites Julio Cortázar’s experience writing about the eyes in an axolotl, a very ancient type of salamander, writing that their eyes “spoke to me of the presence of a different life, another way of seeing.”

Chetwynd monster, Salamander Gate2026. Exhibition view of A FRIENDS MACHINE in the Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photo: Tom Cornille.

As visitors pass through Chetwynd’s gate, watched over by these neon guards, they find themselves at a meeting point in the Middelheim Museum’s sculpture park. Located in Antwerp, Belgium, it is one of the oldest open-air museums in the world. This eastern gate serves as the entrance to the park, connecting the group of artworks inside with the wider community of local residents, patients from the ZAS Middelheim hospital and the UKJA center for child and adolescent psychiatry, and students from the University of Antwerp.

Monster Chetwynd in her exhibit, A Friends Making Machinein the Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photo: Tom Cornille.

A FRIENDS MACHINE in the sculpture garden of the Middleheim Museum

This work, a commission from the Middleheim Museum and now a permanent part of their collection, is part of a larger solo exhibition of Chetwynd’s work, A FRIENDS MACHINE which starts from May 16^u – October 11^u 2026. Inside the show, the former Turner Prize nominee transforms the space into a meeting place and space for dialogue with her program of performances, workshops and film screenings. Creatures, faces and stories will activate Chetwynd’s pieces during the event.

Chetwynd monster, Arches Foreground2026. Exhibition view of A FRIENDS MACHINE in the Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photo: Tom Cornille.

Along the side Salamander Gate is a giant, graphic sculpture that welcomes mythmaking, a leisure time, and gazes that try to understand What is it One of which is Arch Foreground (2026), a series of arches constructed in a collage style that recalls the artists’ relationship with theater and performance. In one, a salamander appears to have emerged from the area of ​​its pink siblings and into this collaged scene. Instead, this little creature is shiny and red with a stripe of black dots. He is a little more sinister, especially seeing that he sits beneath the image of a fine lady, depicted as a majestic bust with flowing hair, however her nose has been removed. All that’s there is a skull-like cavity. Another elegant woman in lace-trimmed robes stands headless in front of her. Above, this scene of lost limbs and decapitation is countered by a color grainy image of what appear to be writhing and eyeless baby moles just days after birth. They are naked and covered with wrinkles of flesh.

Chetwynd monster, Arches Foreground, 2026. Exhibition view of A FRIENDS MACHINE in the Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photo: Tom Cornille.

collage arches and of Chetwynd telling graphic stories

The whole scene is absurd, but in the marriage of these images, a story emerges. Just like the three pink brothers who opened the show, Arch Foreground serves up a collection of images, cut and pasted together, in a way that invites pen and paper, a conversation between friends or a fascinating inquiry into why these pictures Why here, Why now. It feels like an invitation to play a game Indication with Chetwynd’s crops as evidence and character as you relax on a sunny day on these grassy grounds in Antwerp.

Chetwynd monster, hellmouth 5, 2026. Exhibition view of A FRIENDS MACHINE in the Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photo: Tom Cornille.

In another corner he sits Hellmouth 5 (2026), another towering piece that one can walk under, through or around, but now turquoise and anthropomorphic. To enter this arch, one must remove the mouth of a beast. His stuffed upper lip looks like a lion and his large spherical eyes look down. The project originated 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 enlists a prince to rescue her daughter from the clutches of evil. Chetwynd’s work draws a similar line between the good and the menacing. It has an open jaw and ears that pop, alert, eyebrows that sit in a menacing V shape, yet there is a certain cartoonishness that makes it almost silly, a silly villain from a myth.

Chetwynd monster, Tears, 2021. Exhibition view of A FRIENDS MACHINE in the Middelheim Museum, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy: the artist and Middelheim Museum, Antwerp. Photo: Tom Cornille.

zorbs and tears and human emotions

Finally, there is the melancholic Tears (2021), a group of Zorbs, the human-sized inflatable plastic hamster balls. One can choose to go inside and spin in these little worlds, or one can look towards the edge. The Zorbs are said to represent tears, prompting a discussion about how we interact with (or avoid) natural human emotions. Together, A FRIENDS MACHINE it serves as a threshold to the vast garden of Antwerp. It teases the line between the real and the imaginary and, when experienced with friends (or potential future friends), there’s a certain magic that sprouts about the seeds of creativity that Chetwynd scatters in the gardens.