Carnivorous Bloom

In April 2025 Rong Bao will participate in Pinacoteca Agnelli’s La Pista 500. The works on the Pista 500 are created by international artists and include sculptures, light or sound installations, and expanded cinema projects. These interventions engage with the architecture and industrial
past of the Lingotto, with the urban context and the surrounding landscape, transforming the Pista 500 from a closed circuit into an open road, from a productive space into a collective venue for new stories and visions. Past participants include Thomas Bayrle, Monica Bonvicini, Nan Goldin and Louise Lawler.

Rong Bao explores the relationship between attraction and estrangement through sculptures and installations that merge post-human imaginaries with a pop aesthetic. For Pista 500, the artist presents Carnivorous Bloom, an interactive sculpture animated by continuously moving inflatable petals that vibrate and sway like a pulsating organism. The installation takes on the appearance of a carnivorous plant in vivid shades of pink, amplifying its seductive character and evoking mutant botanical forms and alien creatures. A living cell with an undefined identity, its hypnotic breathing invites the public to lie down and let themselves be carried by its vibrations in an enveloping physical and sensorial experience.

With subtle irony, Carnivorous Bloom enters into dialogue with the industrial architecture of the former Lingotto factory and the natural dimension of the elevated rooftop garden. The installation appears as a fluid entity, suspended between creature and machine, between the real and the science-fictional. Bao challenges us to question the meaning of interaction itself, and how such an encounter might subvert our expectations.

The artist’s practice is grounded in audience interaction, encouraging visitors to engage with ambiguous forms and translucent materials that evoke a world both artificial and organic. By playing with the perception of body and space, Bao creates works that oscillate between the enchanting and the unsettling. Her installations transform into immersive environments that disorient while simultaneously opening new possibilities for interpreting matter and identity. Visual design supported by Yuechen Zhou. In-kind sponsorship for the production of the work is provided by Sport Promotion.