Choco in the Garden of Earthly Delights is a collaborative installation by the artist Taline Temizian and architect Ali C. Höcek. The work evokes a duality of nature as pleasure and its inevitable collapse under the weight of human endeavor.

It is in this context that the collaborators propose a strange landscape of nature and construct. Here the visitor, as observer, participant, and drifter will witness the otherness of the landscape as wholly artificial, yet with an invitation of soft luminescence. The environment is composed of inflatable trees illuminating the landscape and the paths that wind among them, as well as other sculptures – a larger-than-life dog, a heart, a brain. The drifter recognizes the calls of birds, the rustle of animals moving through dried leaves, the whine of dogs at night, the beat of the heart. These sounds, though artificial, remind us of the wildness of nature, that it is, in its inception, untamed.

Farther away, in a clearing in the woods at a distance rests a chapel, lightly touching the ground, its illuminated and inflated crown ethereal. On the lighted top of the chapel’s exterior is printed an image of a dog, possibly the pet Choco. The image is ambiguous, evoking both the domesticated animal and the untamed. Inside the chapel it is empty, but for a large video projection of Choco, docile, innocent, and gentle. In the non-presence of a god in the chapel, Choco takes the place of the altar.

This juxtaposition of the natural and artificial questions our humanity. As with Bosch’s triptych, Garden of Earthly Delights, the landscape evokes both admonition and indulgence.  Just as Alice changes frequently in size in Wonderland, adapting to “eat” or “be eaten” realities, the visitor faces the conflict between enjoying this fantastical and artificial wonderland while simultaneously contributing to the destruction and abuse of nature.

The dualities of nature as a beautiful friend who heals, and as a ferocious enemy – the concept of the sublime – is a constant underlying thread through the installation. For our part, the affinity and physical empathy we claim with nature, its flora and fauna, reminds us here that the human hand can abuse both animal and nature, and, in fact, the self and all other humans. Choco in the Garden of Earthly Delights seeks to visualize this duality, to caution and remind us of our responsibility to co-exist with nature and to permit forgiveness of our indulgences.

Each element of the installation has a light footprint. Most, if not all, of the components are fabricated off-site. The foundations to support the trees and chapel are “point-loads,” meaning that they either rest on the ground or have slender piers inset into the ground. This allows for the installation to be disassembled and the grounds returned to their previous condition within one season.

The round platform of the Chapel sits on top of these points, raised half-a-meter off the ground. Set on top of the platform and around its perimeter are approximately twenty panels forming the base of the Chapel. Above the walls rises the sloped roof. This is an inflatable structure that is internally lighted and can be deflated and reinflated.

The metal tube trunks of the trees rest on ground plates. The canopy of each tree is made of inflated plastic fabric and conceals a fan and illumination. During severe weather, the canopy can be lowered on hidden ropes to the ground.