Candice Lin’s g/hosti (2025) starts cheerfully enough, with a giant, green toad suspended in the air. The toad casts a shadow on the opposite wall, cleverly metamorphosing into the shape of a human with raised arms, jubilant. A painted cardboard wall, curved and just above head height, serves as the frog’s backdrop, its contours shaped like foliage. The almost invisible eyes on the toad’s back should have warned me that this was not going to be a magical forest, but something more sinister.

The installation, a commission by the Whitechapel gallery, is set up as a maze, the cardboard walls painted in earthy colours – dark brown, dark green and ochre – curving around the space like the growth rings of a tree. Painted cardboard animals are glued to the walls or attached with wire, while cut-out parts function as openings, letting you glimpse other parts of the installation. There are furry cats hiding behind bushes and an owl is perched on a twig; two grey doves are caught mid-flight as if escaping their cardboard fates. Cute, bright red strawberries the size of apples stick out from the wall, as seductive as the trail of crumbs in Hansel and Gretel. At first sight there is something makeshift, almost amateurish about the installation, like stumbling upon a mis en scène for a local youth theatre production.

Read the full review on Studio International