Rome, Balloon Museum arrives at La Nuvola: large interactive inflatable artworks by contemporary artists

From December 20, 2024 to March 30, 2025, the Balloon Museum, a unique traveling project produced by Lux Entertainment that places the visitor and his or her direct experience at the center, presents a new interactive contemporary art exhibition in the spaces of La Nuvola at EUR in Rome. Euphoria - Art is in the Air, this is the title of the event, is curated by Valentino Catricalà with the collaboration of Antonella Di Lullo, under the patronage of the City of Rome and MiC - Ministry of Culture. Subsequently, from June 5 to August 28, 2025, Euphoria will move to the Grand Palais in Paris.

More than twenty monumental installations and interactive inflatable artworks, many created especially for this occasion, by international contemporary artists such as Carsten Höller, Philippe Parreno, Martin Creed, Marta Minujín, Hyperstudio, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Ryan Gander, A.A. Murakami, Karina Smigla-Bobinski, Cyril Lancelin, Camille Walala, Philip Colbert, Quiet Ensemble, SpY, Nils Völker, Sun Yitian, MOTOREFISICO and Alex Schweder.

With Euphoria - Art is in the Air, the Balloon Museum introduces a new perspective on contemporary art, offering inflatable works not only as an artistic medium, but also as spaces for public interaction and involvement. The 7,000 square meters of La Nuvola are transformed into a place to take a sensory journey in which surprising shapes, vibrant colors, lights and sounds will involve all visitors, young and old. Visitors will therefore not be mere spectators, but active participants in an immersive experiential journey.

“We live in an era when the inflatable is a constant presence in our world occupying leading positions in entertainment, design, and architecture. Thanks to this exhibition, the inflatable and its related declinations or interpretations are seen in a new light: that of visual art and its ability to analyze a society undergoing great change,” said curator Valentino Catricalà."Euphoria - Art is in the Air is an invitation to reflect on the transformative power of art, celebrating the lightness, interaction and communicative power of the inflatable. A new vision of art and the world around us, where each work invites a dialogue that transcends the material itself and becomes a vehicle for reflection and change."

“Since its inception, the Balloon Museum has embraced the idea that the most authentic and purest elements of childhood can be transformed into powerful means of expression. This vision, as simple as it is revolutionary, was born as a creative response to the changing international social and cultural landscape,” said Roberto Fantauzzi, president Lux Entertainment S.p.A. “Thanks to its ability to combine art and entertainment, creativity and wonder, the Balloon Museum has offered an unprecedented and memorable experience to millions of visitors, and we are delighted today to return to Rome, where the project made its debut in 2021, with this unprecedented exhibition that brings the transformative and imaginative power of contemporary art to adults and children alike.”

The protagonists of the exhibition Euphoria - Art is in the Air are some of the biggest names in international contemporary art who have interpretedInflatable art through their own stylistic signature and creative vision. Visitors will be immersed in a series of dreamlike and surreal environments, including geometric labyrinths and inflatable architecture to walk through, kinetic and sound works to activate, rolling spheres and balloons floating in the air.

Carsten Höller has devised a psychedelic Light Wall-composed of 1,152 light bulbs that light up simultaneously, accompanied by a stereo signal-that emits light pulses when the audience is present, inviting them to get in touch with a new visual and sensory perception of space.

Philippe Parreno presents the installations Speech Bubbles and My Room is Another Fish Bowl, designed to explore air as an element of transformation. The former is composed of hundreds of orange balloons floating on the ceiling interacting with light and shadow. Recalling the shape of comic book clouds, these balloons evoke a suspended dialogue that invites visitors to reflect on the nature of communication. The second, on the other hand, creates a kind of aquarium with several fish-shaped balloons that move freely in space following the air current created by the passage of the audience.

Work No. 3883 Half the air in a given space by Martin Creed, among his most famous works, explores the relationship between space, matter and perception. The interactive and playful installation consists of hundreds of blue balloons contained within a greenhouse-like structure. The audience is invited to enter and explore this space, experiencing a disorienting sensory experience. With this work, Creed invites reflection on how the lack of spatial coordinates in the environment can affect our perception and sense of control in space.

Marta Minujín invites the audience to enter Sculpture of Dreams, an imposing nine-meter-high inflatable sculpture that, thanks to the vibrant colors and birdsong typical of Argentina, recreates a multisensory environment that offers a moment of peace, beauty and vitality.

Italian collective Hyperstudio presents three participatory works dedicated to the essence of air and movement. Hyperlove immerses viewers in a surreal and dreamlike environment, evoking the deep connection between earth and sky. The audience is invited to enter a pool of red spheres and interact in the surrounding space of lights, textiles and sounds, becoming an integral part of the work’s dynamic narrative. Invisible Ballet, in collaboration with Mauro Pace, on the other hand, invites us to reflect on the invisible forces that shape our world: the installation presents a vortex of glowing balloons in a mirrored-walled room that generates a fascinating and hypnotic visual effect in which the balloons seem to merge and disappear into space. The Night of St. Lawrence, on the other hand, inspired 10 August, a kinetic installation that recreates a magical environment amid twinkling lights and sounds, where visitors can gently swing on a series of swings and make a wish, choosing their own “star” to transport dreams into the cosmos.

Instead, it is the human experience that is the focus of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s work Pulse Topology: a platform composed of thousands of suspended light bulbs that light up in relation to visitors’ heartbeats. The exhibition tour continues with Imagining things outside your field of vision (Questions in a world that only wants answers), Ryan Gander ’s giant rolling spheres that introduce a game of unexpected dimensions and perspectives. Each sphere has an absurd and provocative question printed on its surface, and visitors are invited to roll them around, sparking a dialogue with the work itself that can provoke curiosity, laughter and reflection.

A.A.Murakami offers an immersion in his ephemeral and floating universe with On the Threshold to the House of Eternity, a work that dissolves the boundaries between the natural, the industrial and the technological: rings of fog, programmed to appear in precise sequences, form and dissolve in the air, passing through scaffolding and machines. Each smoke ring becomes an ephemeral, living presence, leaving trails of fog similar to diffuse cloud formations, transforming the atmosphere of the space.

Karina Smigla-Bobinski’s work, ADA, on the other hand, is a large inflatable sphere studded with charcoals that floats freely in space thanks to the activation of visitors: rolling on itself, the sphere ends up on the white walls of the room, giving rise to a self-generating and ever-evolving work of art.

Cyril Lancelin transforms the space with his geometric and playful universe: the installation Crazy Love For Polygons takes the form of a shifting labyrinth of large red inflatable shapes that, superimposed or placed side by side, invite the audience to traverse an abstract landscape that defies traditional architecture. Camille Walala, with her signature style of geometric shapes, patterns and vibrant colors, also designs a series of inflatable architectural structures for the installation Follow me, I think I know the way, a maze of folded columns, arched passageways, hypnotic tunnels and unbalanced towers where the playful aspect is intertwined with spaces for reflection.

Philip Colbert transforms his most famous creation, the iconic lobster, into an inflatable sculpture of extraordinary dimensions: Inflatable Lobster King, with a playful and surprising approach, mixes contemporary art, pop culture and symbols of consumerism, creating a work that is not only accessible and instantly recognizable, but also deeply conceptual.

In contrast, the Quiet Ensemble collective with A Quiet Storm creates an environment of calm and contemplation: immersed in darkness, dozens of soap bubbles float in space moving to the rhythm of a sound composition created by the artistic duo. Filled with white smoke, the soap bubbles reveal their fragility in contact with the visitor, releasing the dense cloud contained within them. SpY presents the kinetic installation Ovoids composed of eight red ovoids suspended from the ceiling, which move in oscillating cycles of rotation tracing hypnotic choreographies. In fact, with their perfect geometry, these ovoids evoke the primordial form of the egg, a symbol of birth and purity, and with their movement they recall the constant rhythm of life.

Continuing along the path, Nils Völker ’s One Hundred and Twenty combines everyday materials and technology to create a kinetic work that moves according to a programmed choreography: equipped with 480 fans that inflate and deflate 120 garbage bags, the installation continually changes its shape according to an organic wave-like movement.

Sun Yitian, meanwhile, presents the installation Let Me Hold You, which reproduces life-size inflatable toys that the artist depicts in his paintings. These include the cactus, which went from being a dangerous and unapproachable element to being a smooth, thornless balloon ready for the audience’s embrace. As the title suggests, the work in fact lives on the interaction between the represented object and the viewer, opening a reflection on the theme of welcome.

With its MOTOREPHYSICAL Swing, it offers an immersive experience that allows visitors to interact with the work, which consists of a series of suspended spheres that move in space, bounce and rotate like a vortex. Within this playful and dynamic environment, active audience participation results in a collective dance that explores the delicate balance between trust, movement and the joyful unpredictability of human interaction.

Finally, Alex Schweder with The Me That Becomes Through You reflects on air as a means of building love. The installation takes the form of a large cage inside which are large spheres covered in reflective fabrics and pink synthetic furs that expand and contract, changing and shrinking the space, suggesting that love is a negotiation that develops over time.

Euphoria - Art is in the Air is open to the public Monday through Friday from 1 p.m. with last admission at 7 p.m.; Saturdays from 10 a.m. with last admission at 8 p.m.; Sundays from 10 a.m. with last admission at 7 p.m.; holidays from 10 a.m. with last admission at 8 p.m. December 25 and January 1 from 10 a.m. with last admission at 6 p.m.

Tickets available at the link: https://www.ticketone.it/artist/balloon-museum/

For info: balloonmuseum.world

Rome, Balloon Museum arrives at La Nuvola: large interactive inflatable artworks by contemporary artists

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.