The world of weird art installations, where creativity knows no bounds. These exhibits aren’t just art; they’re mind-bending experiences that mess with your thoughts and feelings. This is where creativity goes bonkers and we’re happy for it.
1. Carhenge – Alliance, Nebraska, USA
A replica of Stonehenge made entirely from old cars, 38 vintage cars to me more exact, Carhenge is a quirky and artistic take on the ancient monument.
2. Cadillac Ranch – Amarillo, Texas, USA
Ten half-buried Cadillacs stand upright in a field, each spray-painted with colorful graffiti. Visitors are encouraged to leave their mark on this ever-changing art installation.
3. Molecule Man – Berlin, Germany
Created by artist Jonathan Borofsky, this installation features three giant aluminum figures, standing in the Spree River. It stands there to remind us of the “fact that both people and molecules exist in a world governed by probability, and that the objective of all creative and scientific traditions is finding wholeness and unity within the world.”
4. The Bean – Chicago, Illinois, USA
5. Tower of the Sun – Osaka, Japan
Created for the 1970 World Exposition, this 70-meter tall sculpture by Taro Okamoto is a strange and fascinating blend of art, technology, and history.
6. Singing Ringing Tree – Lancashire, England
This unique wind sculpture emits sounds when the wind blows through its hollow steel pipes designed by Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu. It looks like a tree and it’s so darn cool to look at.
7. Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away – Various locations
Created by Yayoi Kusama, this installation features a dark room with numerous LED lights, creating an illusion of infinite space and prompting viewers to reflect on their place in the universe. You gotta move fast, though, the maximum visiting time is one minute per visitor.
8. The Gates – New York City, USA
A collaborative project by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, “The Gates” was a temporary art installation featuring 7,503 saffron-colored fabric panels hung along 23 miles of walkways in Central Park.
9. The Knotted Grotto – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
An interactive and evolving art piece, the “Knotted Grotto” invited visitors to tie knots in white ribbons as a symbol of their prayers, hopes, and dreams.
10. Your Rainbow Panorama – Aarhus, Denmark
Olafur Eliasson’s circular, glass-walled installation sits atop the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, offering visitors a colorful, panoramic view of the city through a spectrum of colored glass. Amazing from the outside, spectacular from inside.
11. The Rain Room – Various locations
Created by Random International, the “Rain Room” is an interactive installation that uses motion sensors to create a dry zone within a room filled with falling rain, allowing visitors to walk through the downpour without getting wet. You get to control the rain, it’s a “respite from everyday life and an opportunity for sensory reflection within a responsive relationship.”
12. Love Lock Bridge (Pont des Arts) – Paris, France
Though now removed, this famous pedestrian bridge was once home to thousands of padlocks placed by couples as a symbol of their love, creating a temporary but endearing art installation.
13. “Dismaland” by Banksy – UK
Bansky launched this theme park in 2015 in Weston-super-Mare, UK. It featured satirical and subversive takes on popular culture, social issues, global warming, fake news, to name just a few. When the park closed, instead of simply tearing down the structures and disposing of the materials, Banksy repurposed them to help refugees. Many of the materials from “Dismaland” were transported to the “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais, France.
14. The Vandenberg – life below the surface – USA
Or when the actions don’t quite match the surroundings. ‘Even though there is so much life, marine life, all over and around it, the shipwreck itself, to me, is a dead thing,’ Andreas Franke said. ‘But I thought that if I put people on it, then there would again be life on that ship.’ Each of the twelve images is securely sealed within Plexiglas, framed with stainless steel, and safeguarded from water by a resilient silicone seal.
15. WasteLandscape – Paris, France
A thought-provoking art installation created by architect Clémence Eliard and artist Elise Morin. This innovative project repurposes thousands of discarded CDs, transforming them into a visually striking and environmentally conscious landscape. To add to the whole weirdness of it, the location was a former funeral home.
16. Tape Vienna – Vienna, Austria
A structure that ends up looking like a sculpture. A structure that in fact was “‘deriving from of such a dominant host, the parasite structure formed an organic representation of actual spatial flux of the building’. 140 hours work (10 people 2 days), 530 rolls of tape (35600m, 45kg) and a vision, just to sum it up.
Recommended reading next: 21 Weird Conventions: Strange Hobbies Bringing People Together
17. The Truvia Voyage of Discovery – London, UK
An art installation that is in fact a good marketing strategy to gain more traction for Truvia, a stevia-derived natural sweetener. Ever fancied rowing around a pea-green pond, sipping on a cocktail, and soaking in the views of central London?
This was just that! A weird art thing on the roof of Selfridges. Why, you ask? It was all part of a master plan to launch Truvia, a stevia-derived natural sweetener in the UK in 2011, and they did it in style. First off, you gotta take this special lift covered in classic books – we’re talking Treasure Island and Fear of Flying vibes. Then, voilà, you’re on the roof, but not just any roof. They’ve built a whole platform up there, complete with a boating lake (yeah, you heard right – twelve boats, a waterfall, a cocktail booth, and even a lifeguard) and a swanky cocktail bar.
