Evanescent, a large-scale bubble art installation, is on display outside The Weidner on the campus of UW-Green Bay through Sept. 15.

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Giant bubbles are coming to The Weidner on the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay campus.

Big. Huge.

Evanescent, a large-scale, immersive, temporary sculpture by Atelier Sisu, will be on display day and night outside at The Weidner through Sept. 15.

Using light and sound, Evanescent is “art-chitecture” that connects audiences with their environment and is designed to be truly inclusive by emulating the ethereal quality and magic of bubbles. The public is invited to experience Evanescent both during the day, and at night. At more than 20 feet tall, illuminated, and interactive, Evanescent is the Instagram-able, Tik-Tok-worthy snapshot of the year. This is a free event open to the public for viewing.

Made possible by generous support by the City of Green Bay and the 1923 Fund, Evanescent opens to the public just in time for UW-Green Bay to welcome back students and staff for the Fall 2024 semester. Evanescent is presented as part of The Weidner’s effort to expand the arts outdoors and in unexpected places.

Opening day of Evanescent coincided with the beginning of a free, concert series on the Weidner’s Patio Stage. All of campus is invited to every concert to celebrate the start of the new semester. Cash bar will be available.

There will be performances at 4:30 by Pegasis on Wednesday and Arthur Smeall on Wednesday, Sept. 11.

The sculpture will be on display at Estamos Aqui Festival Hispano, the Hispanic Arts & Culture festival now in its second year. The free outdoor festival will be from 3 to 10 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14, on the UW-Green Bay campus. Last year’s inaugural festival attracted more than 8,000 people. Festival attendees can expect five live bands, more than 20 food vendors, a mercadito, family activities and more.

Evanescent is an adjective, meaning “the quality of being fleeting or vanishing quickly, impermanence.”

The artwork was inspired during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the world stopped and everything people took for granted started to disappear. Atelier Sisu endeavoured to communicate this feeling of transient beauty, and the need to live in the moment through the idea of the bubble.

Sydney-based design studio Atelier Sisu works within the intersection of art and architecture creating large-scale site-specific works that enchant by reinventing spaces. By day, Evanescent is made from a colour-reflecting dichroic film that reacts to the changing light of the sun as it moves across the sky, causing a rainbow of reflection across the ground and a unique picture from every angle.

This art-chitecture connects audiences with their environment and is designed to be truly inclusive. By emulating the ethereal quality and magic of bubbles, Atelier Sisu’s Evanescent appeals to our universal playfulness and childlike wonder, the work encourages the audience to consider the world around them as a space of transience and fragility, like that of a bubble.

Atelier Sisu is an award-winning Sydney-based art practice, led by Peruvian sculptor and industrial designer Renzo B. Larriviere and spatial architect and artist Zara Pasfield.

The pair work with a multi-disciplinary team to create experiential environments, installations and unique sculptural pieces. Their direction of work sits between the fields of art and architecture (art-chitecture), with particular focus in the realm of public art.

Each public artwork aims to provide a unique spatial experience for its visitors, while also contributing to the visual identity of a place and promoting community interaction.