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.”

More details on participation and viewing times.

Venue address: 1/F, JC Contemporary, Tai Kwun Contemporary