Studio

For TANK Art Festival, Special Special created a Plant Adoption Bureau where visitors can take home a small but special houseplant through a heart-warming adoption process. Special Special also hosted a meditation hour on the rooftop of the former oil tank architecture. Participants were invited to bathe in a botanical sound experience to recharge and deepening their connection with plants before going back to the bustling festival.

Special Special presented a playground inspired retail pop-up at MGM Macau featuring playful artworks and products that engaged people of all ages to participate in an intimate shopping experience. The spirited nature of the venue offered an alternative space of engagement and retreat in the casino environment for visitors of all ages. The playground featured an extension of Sarah Verity's Love Hotel Rooms project from the previous year, this time titled Share a Room With Us. Visitors of all ages were encouraged to draw a room they love or to envision their ideal stay at the MGM hotel, and the drawings were presented side by side as a collective installation, along with a written message. With Aria McManus’s Towelkini, Mackenzie Younger’s Jackets, Jenny Hata Blumenfield’s cyanotypes and ceramic sculptures, as well as other elements of previous exhibitions and editions, the playground became a platform that expanded the creative dialogue from Special Special’s New York gallery across the world to Macau. 

Throughout the months of the pop-up, Special Special commissioned new cross cultural art editions such as Lu Zhang’s edition of Lion’s Feet Treasure Bowl, a playful, East-meets-West reintepretation of Lion’s Head and clawed vessels meant to enhance good fortune. Will Doenlen created an installation Without Wind, No Waves, a set of 3D individual playing cards about how randomness shapes our lives and, as a result who we are. The significance of both editions appropriately aligned with the resort and casino setting. 

For Inditex’s booth at the 2021 Chinese International Import Expo (CIIE), Special Special presented a Plant Adoption Bureau. The Adoption Bureau’s goal was to create a fulfilling and fun experience for visitors to adopt the many plants and trees at Inditex’s booth so that they could find new homes after the Expo, furthering Inditex’s commitment to sustainability in all aspects of its business.