Explore Fall Blooms at This Installation in Shenzen, China

Alex Proba splashed onto the scene with vibrant, effervescent compositions she hand-painted on the bottoms of or around swimming pools, both private and public (we featured her 8,000-square-foot deck mural at the Manhattan Park Pool Club in 2020). Over the years, Studio Proba has completed indoor murals for Cucina Alba and Hotel June; rug, wallpaper, and tile collections; and Tomorrow Land, the 2021 Miami Design District’s Design Commission. It’s the latter that caught the eye of Linspace, an agency working with Grand Joy City Mall to bring site-specific art to the public gardens and interior courtyards of the recently completed, 3 million-square-foot shopping center in Shenzhen, China.

The result is Unbounded Sanctuary, Proba’s indoor and outdoor installation of seven large-scale pieces in fiberglass and foam that evoke the spontaneous joy of nature, the celebratory color palette in honor of the mall’s grand opening. “They’re meant to feel like a living, growing landscape that’s both surreal and comforting, where each is a character in a shared story,” says Proba, who designed the sculptures in Portland, Oregon, where she’s based, and then oversaw their fabrication in China remotely via daily videos from the production team. Proba is currently overseeing her first permanent installation: a quartet of sculptures commissioned by Bosa Properties for Canada’s Surrey City Centre unveiling this autumn.