Conceived as one of the first experiential events that people visit after lockdown, Your Ship Has Landed is an immersive exhibition by artist and designer Lydia Chan. The Canadian designer has transformed the curving space of NOW Gallery in London into an alien landscape filled with fantastic beasts and uncanny shapes, all rendered in playful rainbow tones.

The large-scale exhibition allows visitors to interact with the space on multiple levels. Chan blends real-world experiences with a series of augmented reality filters, which she collaborated on with digital artists Songyee Kim and Thibaut Evrard.

In this film directed by Carlos Jimenez, Chan plays the role of an intrepid space explorer who lands in a foreign world. Throughout this journey, she talks about her motivation and practice while the viewer witnesses new creatures, plants, and dancers that appear to spring out of her mind.

Jimenez plays with a combination of shapes, saturated colors, and collages to awaken the senses and pay homage to Sixties sci-fi cinema. “I experimented with Super 8mm footage, animation, images, and videos of the artist and her exhibition all interacting with each other to mirror the playfulness in Chan´s intuitive practice,” says the director.

“Leaving space for new combinations and alterations, my intention was to make you feel close to Chan´s mind as well as attempt to emotionally capture the physical space in the film,” says the director. “ At moments closer to traditional documentary techniques and at times far from them, I tried to let the viewers imagine how Chan´s approach to working seems like a discovery of a new world.”

You Ship Has Landed runs from 19 Nov - 6 Mar 2022 at Now Gallery