25th Biennale of Sydney Review: From the Margins

The 25th Biennale of Sydney, titled "Rememory" and curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, features 143 works by 83 artists and collectives from 37 countries across five venues. The exhibition explores marginalized, fragmented, and repressed histories, drawing on Toni Morrison's concept of 'rememory' as a space between remembering and forgetting. Key works include Tuan Andrew Nguyen's film on Vietnam War trauma, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme's immersive installation on Palestinian displacement, Khalid Albaih's photographs of Sudan, and Massinissa Selmani's drawings on Algerian socialist building projects.

ArtReview April & May 2026 Issue Out Now

ArtReview's April & May 2026 issue explores boundaries and limitations in art, with a focus on the 61st Venice Biennale opening amid global conflicts. The cover features Japanese-American performance artist Ei Arakawa-Nash with his husband and twin babies, whose collaborative installation at the Japanese Pavilion incorporates the unpredictability of childcare. The issue includes coverage of controversial national pavilions (Russian, Israeli, American), profiles of artists representing Mongolia and Singapore, and features on Beverly Buchanan, Arthur Jafa, Richard Prince, and Zehra Doğan's report from Rojava. It also reviews the 82nd Whitney Biennial, the 25th Biennale of Sydney, and the 15th Shanghai Biennale.

Venice Biennale 2026: How Do You Critique a Posthumous Exhibition?

The article, published by ArtReview, examines the upcoming 61st Venice Biennale (2026), titled *In Minor Keys*, which was conceived by artistic director Koyo Kouoh before her death from cancer in May 2025 at age 57. The exhibition, based on Kouoh's drafted concept and completed by a curatorial team including Rory Tsapayi, Siddhartha Mitter, Marie Hélène Pereira, Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, and Rasha Salti, adopts a musical metaphor of "minor-ness" and aims to avoid the pitfalls of previous Biennales by focusing on soul frequencies and dissonant harmony rather than direct commentary on world crises. The author, Martin Herbert, questions how critics will respond to a posthumous exhibition of this unprecedented scale, noting that previous artistic directors like Robert Storr, Cecilia Alemani, Christine Macel, and Adriano Pedrosa have faced varied critical receptions.

Taiwan revokes Sakuliu Pavavaljung’s National Award for Arts

Taiwan’s National Culture and Arts Foundation has revoked the National Award for Arts granted to artist Sakuliu Pavavaljung in 2018, ordering him to return the NTD 1 million prize. The revocation follows a Supreme Court ruling on 1 April that upheld a January 2025 conviction by the Pingtung District Court, which found the artist guilty of rape and sentenced him to four years and six months in prison.

There Has Never Been an Apolitical Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale, with its national pavilion structure, has always been a platform for political expression and soft power, a reality evident from its early 20th-century origins. Contemporary critic Arturo Lancellotti's 1909 review of the German and British pavilions was steeped in geopolitical context, revealing how national artistic displays were interpreted through the lens of imperial power and military alliances.

Ibrahim Mahama awarded 2026 Arnold Bode Prize

Ghanaian visual artist Ibrahim Mahama has been awarded the 2026 Arnold Bode Prize by the city of Kassel. The prize, announced by his gallery White Cube, includes a €10,000 award in recognition of his artistic practice.

The Politics of Russia’s Return to the Venice Biennale

Russia has announced its intention to return to the Venice Biennale in 2026, marking its first participation since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The proposed pavilion, titled "The Tree is Rooted in the Sky," plans to feature 38 participants from Russia and several Global South nations. The announcement has sparked intense backlash from the European Commission and culture ministers across 22 countries, who argue that Russia’s presence undermines democratic values and serves as a tool for "dark cultural diplomacy."

Anne Hardy’s Hollow Humanoids

British artist Anne Hardy presents a suite of floor-based installations and assemblage sculptures titled "Interloper" at Visual. The exhibition features a series of "Beings"—twisted, life-size humanoid entities constructed from rusted wire, crushed cans, soil, and the artist’s own cast body parts and clothing. These figures, often posed in yoga-like positions or meditative stances, appear as hollow, faceless outlines that blend a sense of vitality with physical disintegration.

Event: Hammad Nasar and Billy Tang, Off the Record

ArtReview and Ursula magazine have announced a collaborative talk featuring curators Hammad Nasar and Billy Tang as part of their "Off the Record" series in London. The event, held at the Farm Shop in Mayfair, is designed as an intimate, live conversation focused on the working methods and inspirations of creative visionaries. Nasar, a veteran curator and MBE recipient, will join Tang, the Artistic Director of the new Yan Du Project, to discuss their respective practices and the evolution of creative thinking.

15th Shanghai Biennale Review: Code Switching

The 15th Shanghai Biennale, titled 'Code Switching,' has opened at the Power Station of Art (PSA). The exhibition, centered on the theme of what hears and what can be heard, features immersive installations like Allora & Calzadilla's floating yellow synthetic flowers in the atrium, which create a striking yet artificial environment that visitors eagerly photograph. The experience is framed by promotional gestures, such as free manuka honey samples, blurring lines between art, commerce, and audience participation.

Museum as Networked Modality

The article examines the evolving and often problematic relationship between museums and digital art. It highlights the institutional struggle to define and categorize works that use contemporary technologies like AI, blockchain, and robotics, noting that canonical figures like Leo Villareal, Jenny Holzer, and Andreas Gursky are often excluded from the "digital art" label. The piece cites specific examples, from Harold Cohen's early algorithmic work to Sougwen Chung's robotic collaborations and Rhea Myers's responsive NFTs, to illustrate the diverse and transmedia nature of these practices.

Hunker Down With John Skoog

Artist John Skoog has premiered a new black-and-white feature film, 'Redoubt' (2025), starring Denis Lavant, and opened a concurrent exhibition at Moderna Museet in Malmö. The film follows a farmhand building an apocalyptic shelter, while the museum installation features the full-scale, fabricated bunker from the film's production.

art words of the year

Artnet News critic Ben Davis presents his annual "art words of the year" for 2025, a curated list of terms that capture prevailing moods and ideas in the art world. The list includes "antimemetics" (from writer Nadia Asparhouva and internet fiction), "cyniserity" (coined by art writer David Colman to describe Anne Imhoff's work), "delightmare" (a horror-adjacent feeling linked to overconsumption and AI art, exemplified by Beeple's Art Basel installation), "elite capture" (from philosopher Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò's book, now a tool for critiquing identity politics in art), and "K-shaped" (an economic term describing divergent recovery, applied to gallery closures versus record auction sales).

hito steyerl medium hot images heat verso

Artist Hito Steyerl has published a new book, *Medium Hot: Images in the Age of Heat*, through Verso, continuing her long-running exploration of how images, technology, and politics intersect. The article traces her intellectual evolution from earlier works like *The Wretched of the Screen* (2013) and *Duty Free Art* (2017), highlighting key essays and video works such as *How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File* (2013), which satirizes surveillance culture. It notes that Steyerl topped ArtReview’s 2017 Power List as the most influential person in the art world, and that her latest book addresses war and violent conflict in the context of Web3, with a more decisive tone.

Ralph Lemon: The Physical Traces of Racism

Ralph Lemon's exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery presents 13 black-and-white photographs and three short videos focusing on sites in the Mississippi Delta connected to the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till. Rather than dramatizing the incident, Lemon records physical traces of the locations—such as Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, the barn where Till was killed, the Tallahatchie River, and a funeral home—capturing dilapidated buildings and landscapes that suggest history slipping away. The show includes the titular video "From Out of Space" (2018–21), which offers closeups and drone footage of these sites, creating a meditative, detective-like examination of memory and erasure.

‘Overworked’: Çağla Ulusoy in Conversation With ArtReview

ArtReview and Dirimart London are hosting a conversation between artist Çağla Ulusoy and ArtReview editor Fi Churchman about Ulusoy's book 'Overworked', which features 83 selected abstract paintings and accompanying collages. The event takes place on 6 June 2026 at Dirimart's London gallery, coinciding with the group exhibition 'Colour is the Place', which includes Ulusoy's work alongside artists Hashel Al Lamki, Tala Worrell, and Berke Yazıcıoğlu. Ulusoy's practice integrates lived experiences from various cultures into abstract compositions using materials like acrylic, oil paint, sand, and wax.

Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art 2026 Review: Up Close and Personal

The 2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, titled 'Yield Strength,' features 24 artists across three venues, curated by Ellie Buttrose. The exhibition explores resilience under political and social pressures, with works like Erika Scott's fused assemblages from discarded domestic items, Jennifer Matthew's steel construction that manipulates visitor movement, and Nathan Beard's silicone arms critiquing exoticization of Thai culture. The title borrows an engineering term for the point at which materials transform under stress, reflecting the show's focus on art that strains formal boundaries without breaking.

Gardar Eide Einarsson Leaves You in the Dark

Gardar Eide Einarsson’s latest exhibition at Maureen Paley’s East London space presents a haunting exploration of dissociation and coded information. The show features two distinct series: 'Closed Caption,' a collection of monochrome black gouache paintings featuring isolated subtitles from films, and 'Incendiary Test Area,' a set of hyperrealistic woodblock prints created in collaboration with master Shoichi Kitamura. These prints depict the interiors of mock 'Japanese' houses built by the US Army for fire-bombing tests during World War II.

Locating Luigi Ghirri

Fashion photographer Alessio Bolzoni and film director Luca Guadagnino have collaborated on 'Felicità', a new book and exhibition at Thomas Dane Gallery featuring 45 previously unseen color photographs by the late Italian master Luigi Ghirri. The project is divided into two portfolios: the first focuses on intimate, abstract details of found objects and surfaces in Modena, while the second expands into larger vistas and populated spaces across Italy during the 1980s.

Notes from New York: Rotting Meat

Artist Jen Liu’s solo exhibition 'Pound of Flesh' at Silverlens New York explores the dehumanizing nature of digital labor through visceral imagery of raw meat. The show features paintings where human consciousness is replaced by butcher-shop cuts and an animated video based on Liu’s research into microworkers—individuals who perform repetitive, low-paid tasks to train AI models. By juxtaposing the biological reality of the body with the clinical extraction of data, Liu highlights the physical and psychological toll of the 'Agentic Age.'

Thomas Zipp, artist with a sideways sense of history, 1966–2026

German artist Thomas Zipp, known for his dark, punk-infused explorations of history and science, has died at age 60. Throughout a career spanning painting, sculpture, and immersive scenographic installations, Zipp blended a Dadaist sensibility with a deep interest in politics, neuroscience, and the nuclear age. His work often challenged viewers with complex, opaque environments, such as his notable 2013 Venice Biennale installation that transformed a palazzo into a psychological sanatorium.

Isabel Nolan on Representing Ireland at the 61st Venice Biennale

Artist Isabel Nolan will represent Ireland at the 61st Venice Biennale in 2026 with an exhibition titled 'Dreamshook' in the Arsenale. Her presentation will feature a room of tapestries, sculptures, and drawings, inspired by late Medieval European humanist thinkers who questioned inherent human goodness and sought meaning in earthly life.

Craig Jun Li: Scrapping the Camera

Artist Craig Jun Li's solo exhibition features collagist wall-works and installations that deconstruct photographic technology. Works like the 2025 silicone sheets incorporate altered dye-transfer prints, Polaroids, and actual camera parts like SX-70 film cartridge springs, redirecting focus from pictorial representation to the mechanical apparatus of image-making.

Why Beatriz González’s Haunting Paintings Are More Relevant Than Ever

Why Beatriz González’s Haunting Paintings Are More Relevant Than Ever

A major retrospective of Colombian artist Beatriz González, "Beatriz González: A Retrospective," is touring internationally, with recent stops at the Pérez Art Museum Miami and the Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia in Bogotá. The exhibition, the largest of her 60-year career, showcases over 150 works, including her iconic paintings that appropriate and rework images from art history and mass media to critique political violence, social inequality, and cultural memory in Colombia.

Nat Faulkner: The Stuff of Photography

Artist Nat Faulkner has opened a new exhibition at Camden Art Centre featuring works that explore the physical and chemical foundations of photography. The show includes large-scale photographic pieces like 'Aqua Fortis' and sculptural works such as 'Aperture (Iodine)', which uses iodine solution in skylight panels to bathe the space in amber light, alongside silver-plated 'Analogue' reliefs created through electroplating.

Mikala Tai to curate 2027 TarraWarra Biennial

Mikala Tai has been appointed curator of the tenth TarraWarra Biennial, scheduled to run from July 31 to November 14, 2027, at the TarraWarra Museum of Art in Healesville, Australia. Tai is a Sydney-based curator, writer, and academic specializing in contemporary Australian and Asian art.

Spectral Birds Endemic to New Zealand Find New Life in Fiona Pardington’s Portraits

Spectral Birds Endemic to New Zealand Find New Life in Fiona Pardington’s Portraits

New Zealand artist Fiona Pardington will present her photographic series *Taharaki Skyside* in the Aotearoa New Zealand Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale. The large-scale, spectral portraits depict preserved specimens of endemic birds, including extinct and critically endangered species like the huia and the South Island Takahe, captured from within the country's natural history collections.

Of the Love that Moves the Sun and the Other Stars: An Interview with Amalia Cross

DEL AMOR QUE MUEVE EL SOL Y LAS OTRAS ESTRELLAS. ENTREVISTA A AMALIA CROSS

The Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (MSSA) in Santiago has inaugurated a major collection-based exhibition titled "Del amor que mueve el sol y las otras estrellas," curated by art historian Amalia Cross. The show revisits the museum's unique history—from its origins during Salvador Allende’s presidency and the international "Operation Truth" to its period of exile following the 1973 coup and its eventual return to Chile. Featuring works by global icons such as Alexander Calder, Lygia Clark, and Yoko Ono, the exhibition emphasizes movement and collective action across various mediums including sculpture, video, and installation.

Lisson Gallery Artists in Venice | Exhibitions

Lisson Gallery is promoting the participation of its roster of artists in the 61st Venice Biennale and other concurrent exhibitions in Venice. The gallery's announcement highlights major presentations by artists like Anish Kapoor, Otobong Nkanga, and Ding Yi at various venues throughout the city.

Frieze London's Artist-to-Artist section highlights talent emerging amid political tensions

At Frieze London 2025, the Artist-to-Artist section features emerging artists selected by established names, including René Treviño chosen by Amy Sherald and Ilana Harris-Babou nominated by Camille Henrot. Treviño's solo presentation centers on the sculpture 'Regalia, Moscas Brillantes (Rojo)' (2025), which addresses queer resistance and colonial histories through a fusion of Aztec and European aesthetics. Other presentations include Katherine Hubbard's photographs about her mother's dementia (nominated by Nicole Eisenman), T. Venkanna's delicate works on gender and patriarchy (picked by Bharti Kher), Ana Segovia's subversive cowboy paintings (selected by Abraham Cruzvillegas), and Neal Tait's paintings (chosen by Chris Ofili).