Exhibitions

SCAD deFINE ART 2025 honors Zanele Muholi, a South African visual activist known for documenting Black queer identity and marginalized communities. Through photography, film and sculpture, Muholi challenges stereotypes and highlights the need for representation.The exhibition features key works, including Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness), a series of black-and-white self-portraits where Muholi transforms everyday objects into powerful symbols of race and body politics. Brave Beauties celebrates trans women and nonbinary individuals in empowered poses, while Faces and Phases documents Black lesbians in South Africa facing discrimination. A new series of lightbox self-portraits continues Muholi’s exploration of identity and visibility.Muholi describes their work as a tool for repres...

London-based artist Rong Bao first turned heads with her 2023 debut solo exhibition at Saatchi Gallery. Fitting titled Rong Bao Is Me, the show welcomed audiences into Bao's whimsical universe through a lively romp of inflatable sculptures and immersive installations. The survey transformed the familiar into something wonderful, punctuating the typical solemnity of white-walled galleries with a refreshing burst curiosity.Now, Bao will inaugurate Carl Kostyál's Hong Kong space with a new solo show. Running from March 23 through April 30, the eponymous exhibition delves deeper into her ongoing exploration of mischief and defiance through a tactility, materiality, form and her signature sense of wit. “In my artistic journey, playfulness and humor are the core elements from which I craft a sur...

Ai Weiwei has built a career on defiance. Whether smashing ancient artifacts or filling museum floors with handcrafted porcelain sunflower seeds, his work is a challenge to authority, a refusal to accept history at face value. Now, Seattle will host his most expansive U.S. exhibition yet.Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei, opening this week at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), spans 40 years of work—over 130 pieces that confront power, censorship and cultural identity. Iconic works like "Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn" (1995), "Study of Perspective" (1995–2011), and "Sunflower Seeds" (2010) will be on view, alongside new pieces making their international debut.For the first time in its history, SAM will dedicate all three of its locations to a single artist. The Seattle Asian Art Museum ...

Desert X is back for its fifth U.S. edition, planting a suite of site-specific installations in Southern California’s Coachella Valley. Curated by Neville Wakefield and Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, this year’s exhibition features the work of 11 international artists, each responding to the vast desert landscape, in a living dialogue of art, land and deep time.The 2025 iteration spotlights the region’s resilient spirit, looking to the wisdom embedded in the timeless landscape as subject and focus. “Curated by the place it temporarily inhabits, Desert X reveals the [landscape] as a canvas of real and imagined histories, narrating tales of displacement, sovereignty and adaptation superimposed over visible testaments of time,” Garcia-Maestas noted in a recent statement.Works on view explore themes ...

The human body stands as, perhaps, one of the earliest sources of artistic inspiration. Traditionally used to explore ideas of holiness, beauty and virtue, the 20th century saw a turn in interrogation of flesh form, shifting toward conversations of identity and performance to forge a language for the many ways we move throughout the world.A new exhibition at Paris' Bourse de Commerce, fittingly titled Corps et âmes, explores how modern and contemporary artists approach this connection between the body and soul. Drawing one hundred works from the Pinault Collection, the exhibition spotlights corporeal articulations across painting, sculpture, photography, video and drawing, featuring the likes of 40 notable names, such as Arthur Jafa, Duane Hanson, Ana Mendieta, David Hammons, Kara Walker, ...

British-Nigerian photographer and filmmaker Gabriel Moses is set to unveil his largest exhibition yet. Titled Selah, the show will present over 70 photographs and 20 films from the self-taught, South London-native, showcasing new works alongside his impressive oeuvre in arenas of art, music, fashion and sport.Unfolding across two floors of 180 Studios, which also hosted his debut exhibition, Selah culls a constellation of works from Moses’ career, including music videos like “FE!N” by Travis Scott and Playboi Carti, and "Lost Times" by Schoolboy Q, in addition to portraits of Skepta, Slawn, Alek Wek, Jude Bellingham and more.Also on view is the premiere of The Last Hour, his latest short film executive produced by (di)vision and GOAT. Shot in Atlanta, Georgia, 180 Studios describes the pie...

Often lacking a recognizable face or shape, abstract works are magic for the imagination as they leave loose interpretations--allowing viewers to impose their own meanings and interpretations without constraint. Swedish painter, David von Bahr, exercises abstraction through personal motion and physical movements. He relies on both methodical and intuitive approaches to create an obtrusive mash of paint and strokes on canvas. The artist is currently the focus of a solo show called Energized at Gallery Steinsland Berliner in Stockholm, Sweden. On view through April 5, the presentation features a bold selection of abstract pieces. One work looks like it’s on fire, entangled in a forest of wispy flames set against a black backdrop. Another painting, seemingly features a stack of spliced bio ma...

It's an entirely impossible feat to capture the extraordinarily outrageous life of Leigh Bowery, but a retrospective at Tate Modern feels like an honorable place to start. Bowery was a larger than life figure who permeated all aspects of modern culture, even still to this day. From performance artist to club promoter to model, Bowery's wild eclecticism escaped all formal boundaries of definition. Bowery initially rose to fame as a club promoter and underground performance artist in 1980s London, among other things, working the door for the short-lived but infamous nightclub Taboo. Known as one of the hardest doors and hottest places to be, Bowery, alongside a generation of club kids, cultivated a defiant art scene that did not flinch in the face of their political context. For the first ti...

For American artist Paul Pfeiffer, an image is a door into the collective consciousness. Working across sculpture, video, photography and installation, Pfeiffer constructs his own visual vernacular of spectacle, returning to the question, “Is the image making us, or do we make images?” or put simply: “Who’s using who?”The Guggenheim Bilbao Museum is currently hosting Pfeiffer’s largest survey exhibition in Europe, spotlighting over thirty works created over the last twenty-five years. After debuting at MOCA's Geffen Contemporary in Los Angeles, Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom makes sense of our fixation on the spectacular, shining a light on the moments and images that make us.Drawing a connection between religious icons and the contemporary cult of celebrity – pop stars, act...

A decade after Mr.'s debut institutional show on the West Coast, the Japanese Superflat artist made his return to the States with his latest exhibition, IT WAS ON A BRILLIANT DAY. —  his first solo show in Los Angeles.Characterized by a distinctive and chaotic style,  Mr.'s work is reminiscent of the organized chaos found in Japanese mega-discount retail chains like Don Quijote, where shoppers are overwhelmed by the sheer abundance and variety of goods. His art evokes the cluttered, vibrant, and eclectic nature of consumer culture in Japan, drawing inspiration from the urban jungle of mass-produced treasures.Beneath Mr’s anime-like depictions of boys and girls, lies a deeper exploration of escapism that’s shaped by his own troubled family background. This personal history is reflected in t...

Dada Khanyisa's signature 'sculptural paintings' are taking center stage in a new solo exhibition London's Sadie Coles HQ. Titled this is for you, the Joburg-raised Cape Town-based, artist reflects their immediate community in the South African capital to constructs a lively visual poetry. Blending pop and youth culture with a deeper political history, Khanyisa captures contemporary and reflects it back onto the viewer with vibrancy, movement and humor.this is for you looks to nostalgia and collective history as means to explore the present. The works on view, created from hand-carved wood and found objects, bear a scrapbook-like quality. Khanyisa's background in traditional and digital animation sings through modernist forms, enchanting a choreographic figurative approach where posed subj...

Currently on show at Aspen Art Museum is the rainbow body, the newest solo exhibition by contemporary artist Ugo Rondinone.Known for his eclectic and colorful creations, Rondinone’s exhibit transforms the museum’s entire second-floor gallery space into a prismatic arena comprised of bold fluorescent hues, which creates a seamless synergy that harmonizes with the artworks within. 113 life-like sculptures of dancers appear at rest and in waiting across the space, inviting visitors to delve deeper into the show’s theme, which explores the multifaceted significance as well as the ephemeral mysticism of the rainbow.Rondinone describes the rainbow as "a bridge between everyone and everything," emphasizing nature's intrinsic connection to humanity. The exhibition's title refers to a spiritual rit...