Emmanuelle Moureaux Sets Thousands of Paper Insects Aflight

Architect Emmanuelle Moureaux continues her 100 Colors series, this time forming her signature paper into thousands of insects that took flight in Shanghai.

Emmanuelle Moureaux On Crafting A Kaleidoscope Of Butterflies

• 40,000 butterflies
• Fifteen months of design and production
• 7 1/2 miles of thread
• 50+ designers, producers, and installers led by Emmanuelle Moureaux
• Six days of installation

For her 100 colors butterflies, part of “The Art of Absolue,” an exhibition in Shanghai sponsored by and that showcased products from cosmetics brand Lancôme, Emmanuelle Moureaux began with 1:1 scale paper models of the insect in her Tokyo studio. 

Moureaux used SketchUp and Photoshop renderings to determine the installation’s overall layout, which she wanted to feel like a kaleidoscope of butterflies soaring through the CSSC Pavilion, a 4,300-square-foot exhibition space.

Moureaux’s team cut the shapes out of 100 different colors of paper, then connected them to transparent thread, labeled and packed each strand, and shipped them to Shanghai.

On-site, installers on scissor lifts suspended the approximately 1,000 strands, each 32 feet long, from the ceiling.

100 colors butterflies ran from December 23, 2023, to January 28, 2024. 

It marked the 48th installment of Moureaux’s 100 Colors series, a chromatic body of work that began with a Tokyo installation in 2013 and explores what she calls the “form” of color, how it can divide and transform space.

For this iteration, Moureaux was inspired by symbolisms of the butterfly—from beauty and love to transformation and rebirth. 

The encircling swarm of shapes was intended as an abstract representation of eternity, following the exhibition’s theme: perpetual, beyond time.