Before the Eclipse looks back at art made in Mexico between 1981 and 1991 through archaeology, ecology, popular culture and the country’s move toward globalisation. I like the use of archaeology as a metaphor for such a recent period. We normally dig through centuries. Here only a few decades are enough to reveal that ideas about national identity can become historical layers surprisingly quickly.
https://www.museotamayo.org/en/exposiciones/ante-el-eclipse-arqueologias-del-arte-en-mexico
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museotamayo.org Before the Eclipse Jun 10, 2026 - Oct 18, 2026
Heri Dono’s Fermentation of the Mind places fibreglass heads on old school desks. Step on a pedal and they nod together while distorted chanting begins. It is funny for a moment, then slightly disturbing. A classroom should create independent thought, yet here agreement has become mechanical. Dono turns propaganda into choreography, using recycled electronics and references to Indonesian shadow-puppet traditions.
https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/exhibitions/heri-dono-fermentation-of-the-mind/
mplus.org.hk Heri Dono: Fermentation of the Mind | M+ Museum Join us at M+ to explore Heri Dono’s kinetic installation 'Fermentation of the Mind' (1992–1993), which resembles a classroom, featuring rows of old wooden desks topped with white fibreglass heads.
Zohra Opoku works between her upbringing in East Germany and her ancestral connections to Ghana, often using cloth, photography and personal imagery to explore identity and memory. What stays with me is that fabric already has a history before the artist touches it. It folds, travels, wears out and touches bodies. Memory does something similar. Perhaps that is why textile can feel more intimate than a perfectly clean surface.
Zeitz MOCAA We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight - Zeitz MOCAA Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) presents We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight, the first museum survey exhibition of Ghanaian-German artist Zohra Opoku. Tracing a decade of quiet revolutions in cloth, memory, and self, the exhibition brings together textured expressions of personal history and cultural inheritance, revealing an artistic journey in constant motion. […]
Aurèlia Muñoz pushed fibre beyond the wall. Her macramé structures, bird-kites and handmade-paper works treat weaving less as decoration than as a way of building space. What interests me is how something associated with softness can suddenly behave architecturally, suspended between sculpture and drawing. The knot becomes more than technique. It becomes a way of thinking in three dimensions.
museoreinasofia.es Aurèlia Muñoz The exhibition Aurèlia Muñoz. Beings plots an all-encompassing route through the work of an artist who is pivotal to an understanding of contemporary textile art. Involved in movements such as Nouvelle Tapisserie and the Escuela Catalana del Tapiz (the Catalan Tapestry School), Aurèlia Muñoz (Barcelona, 1926–2011) transcended the spheres of fabric, fibre and craft, her work drawing on a combination of ancestral techniques and contemporary resources to focus on the impact of post-industrial crises in land, water and aerial ecosystems, which emerged as large motifs in her oeuvre. In this instance, her early collages and assemblages, with Surrealist and gothic influences, and large-scale pictorial embroidery pieces lead into an unseen ensemble of macramé structures from the collections of institutions in Spain, Europe and the USA. Her emblematic kite-sculptures and her final installations, produced with handmade paper, are also central to the show, as is a vast selection of maquettes and drawings displayed for the first time. The exhibition, with a title referring to one of Muñoz’s core concepts — entes (beings) — spans the fifty or more years of her multifaceted practice, crafting an unprecedented view that seeks to open fresh perspectives on her unique legacy. The exhibition will also be on view at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) from 5 November 2026 to 29 March 2027.
Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels places four enormous concrete cylinders in Utah’s Great Basin Desert. The work turns sunlight, landscape and the movement of the earth into part of its structure. I like that the tunnels are massive yet their real material may be something untouchable: where light lands at a particular moment. Architecture usually gives us shelter from nature. Here it is built to notice nature more precisely.
https://www.diaart.org/media/_file/brochures/holt-tri-fold-brochure-for-website.pdf
Robert Smithson built Spiral Jetty in 1970 from thousands of tons of black basalt and earth extending into Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Unlike sculpture protected inside a museum, it lives with changing water levels, salt, weather and time. That seems essential rather than accidental. The environment is not merely around the artwork. It keeps participating in what the artwork becomes.
https://diaart.org/media/_file/brochures/spiral-jetty-7-18-for-website-3.pdf
Yayoi Kusama’s mirrored rooms create the impression of endless space using surprisingly limited ingredients: mirrors, light and repetition. Dancing Lights That Flew Up to the Universe is currently part of Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now. What stays with me is the contradiction. Infinity is experienced inside a carefully bounded room. Perhaps scale has less to do with physical size than with what an image convinces the mind to continue.
https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/guggenheim-pop
#YayoiKusama #InstallationArt #InfinityRoom #ContemporaryArt
The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation From Andy Warhol to Maurizio Cattelan, this exhibition features Pop art from the collection and its enduring influence on contemporary artists.
Anni Albers treated weaving as more than decoration. At the Bauhaus and later Black Mountain College, textile became a way to think through structure, repetition, colour and material itself. What interests me is how modern the work still feels without needing a screen or machine. A grid made from thread can carry the same precision we now associate with pixels.
https://shop.tate.org.uk/anni-albers-exhibition-book-paperback/20189.html
William Kentridge’s Shadow Procession turns simple silhouetted figures and objects into a moving procession. Some shapes transform almost absurdly: ordinary objects begin behaving like animals or vehicles. The means are deliberately visible and uncomplicated. That is what I like about it. Animation does not need realism to create life. Sometimes a cut-out shape moving across a wall can suggest more history, weight and emotion than a perfectly rendered digital figure.
‘Why Should I Hesitate: Putting drawings to work’ – Zeitz MOCAA hosts William Kentridge survey
Zeitz MOCAA 'Why Should I Hesitate: Putting drawings to work' - Zeitz MOCAA hosts William Kentridge survey - Zeitz MOCAA Cape Town, 25 August 2019: The largest ever survey exhibition by internationally acclaimed artist William Kentridge opens in Cape Town in August. This major exhibition will be hosted simultaneously in two parts by the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), which will host his multi-media works; and at Norval Foundation, which will present […]
Ryoji Ikeda is strongly associated with precise audiovisual work and data-driven visual environments, yet the Barbican’s 2026 Portrait weekend focused on music for acoustic ensembles across strings, percussion and voice. I like that shift. An artist closely identified with digital precision can move the same thinking into physical performers and acoustic space. Artistic identity becomes more interesting when the method survives after the familiar tools disappear.
barbican.org.uk From Colombia to Iceland, artisan craft to unexpected pop-ups: Barbican reveals its Spring 2026 highlights | Barbican
Sarah Sze builds installations from ordinary objects, images, videos and fragments that can shift in scale from something almost microscopic to something architectural. Her work makes me think about how easily attention moves between those extremes now. We zoom into a screen, step back into a room, then return to a tiny detail. Perhaps scale is no longer only a property of objects. It has become a habit of looking.
https://www.fondationcartier.com/en/collection/artists/sarah-sze
Fondation Cartier Sarah Sze | Collection of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain — Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain Welcome to the new premises of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain at 2 Place du Palais-Royal, Paris.