Spider Lily (Performance)
彼岸花
Video Game + Sculptures
2025
彼岸花
Video Game + Sculptures
2025
Exhibition History
Open World, Rip Space, Los Angeles, CA, curated by Vera Petukhova in collaboration with Gray Area , February 21 - 23, 2025
Cafe.exe, presented by Artdao and Future Art Ecosystems, Serpentine Galleries‘ innovation hub, Valerie’s Factory, Buenos Aires, Argentina, curated by Alice Scope, November 18 -22, 2025.
Project Description
Spider Lily is a cinematic platformer game that explores emotional attachment through the language of play. Set within a liminal world imagined as a vast hydraulic system for the cleansing of souls, the work reinterprets the “escort” mechanic, a familiar trope in video games, as a study of care and interdependence.
The player inhabits the perspective of the Lost Soul, a twelve-year-old girl who awakens on the desolate shores of purgatory with no memory of her past life. She encounters a blind fish whose eyes have been taken by ravens. The girl and the fish form a faithful bond that becomes the emotional and mechanical heart of the game. What begins as a narrative of rescue becomes an allegory of letting go.
Spider Lily, the title of the game, is the red flower that grows alongside the land of yellow springs, the Chinese idea of Purgatory called Huang Quan. It guides the spirits of the deceased on the path to rebirth. Drawn from the rich, symbolic imagery of the yellow springs, the purgatory land functions as a vast water system designed to usher each soul on a journey of progressive stages of purification towards their next life. The shore extracts materials, the forest dissolves memories, the desert purifies desire through evaporation, and the temple circulates souls into rebirth.
Formally, Spider Lily extends beyond the logic of traditional adventure games. It approaches gameplay as a system of emotional ecology—one in which loss, trust, and transformation become mechanical as well as spiritual processes. The work meditates on how worlds are sustained through acts of care and release, and on how play might offer a passage between the living and the dead.
The early development of Spider Lily from Summer 2023 - January 2025 culminated in a performance at Rip Space, where an early version of the game was presented as an environmental exploration accompanied by a reading and musical performance by after enya.
Team
Co-Director and Lead Producer: Matthew Doyle
Lead 3D Artist: Isabelle Amaral
Unreal Engine Game Developer and Designer: Jovanni Mixco
Unreal Engine Generalist: Cecil Boey
Original score: after enya (Chris McKelway + Matthew Doyle)
Open World, Rip Space, Los Angeles, CA, curated by Vera Petukhova in collaboration with Gray Area , February 21 - 23, 2025
Cafe.exe, presented by Artdao and Future Art Ecosystems, Serpentine Galleries‘ innovation hub, Valerie’s Factory, Buenos Aires, Argentina, curated by Alice Scope, November 18 -22, 2025.
Project Description
Spider Lily is a cinematic platformer game that explores emotional attachment through the language of play. Set within a liminal world imagined as a vast hydraulic system for the cleansing of souls, the work reinterprets the “escort” mechanic, a familiar trope in video games, as a study of care and interdependence.
The player inhabits the perspective of the Lost Soul, a twelve-year-old girl who awakens on the desolate shores of purgatory with no memory of her past life. She encounters a blind fish whose eyes have been taken by ravens. The girl and the fish form a faithful bond that becomes the emotional and mechanical heart of the game. What begins as a narrative of rescue becomes an allegory of letting go.
Spider Lily, the title of the game, is the red flower that grows alongside the land of yellow springs, the Chinese idea of Purgatory called Huang Quan. It guides the spirits of the deceased on the path to rebirth. Drawn from the rich, symbolic imagery of the yellow springs, the purgatory land functions as a vast water system designed to usher each soul on a journey of progressive stages of purification towards their next life. The shore extracts materials, the forest dissolves memories, the desert purifies desire through evaporation, and the temple circulates souls into rebirth.
Formally, Spider Lily extends beyond the logic of traditional adventure games. It approaches gameplay as a system of emotional ecology—one in which loss, trust, and transformation become mechanical as well as spiritual processes. The work meditates on how worlds are sustained through acts of care and release, and on how play might offer a passage between the living and the dead.
The early development of Spider Lily from Summer 2023 - January 2025 culminated in a performance at Rip Space, where an early version of the game was presented as an environmental exploration accompanied by a reading and musical performance by after enya.
Team
Co-Director and Lead Producer: Matthew Doyle
Lead 3D Artist: Isabelle Amaral
Unreal Engine Game Developer and Designer: Jovanni Mixco
Unreal Engine Generalist: Cecil Boey
Original score: after enya (Chris McKelway + Matthew Doyle)
Spider Lily - Teaser 2025
Performance during the opening night at Rip Space.
High Above the Stars
2025
21.7 x 54.3 x 18.4 cm
Resin, enamel paint
2025
21.7 x 54.3 x 18.4 cm
Resin, enamel paint
Lover’s Tear
2025
30.4 x 40 x 25.7 cm
Resin, enamel paint
2025
30.4 x 40 x 25.7 cm
Resin, enamel paint
I Tried to Speak
2025
29.3 x 46.5 x 25.5 cm
Resin, enamel paint
2025
29.3 x 46.5 x 25.5 cm
Resin, enamel paint