From Chiharu Shiota鈥檚 intricate webs to teamLab鈥檚 responsive digital environments, contemporary installation art continues to blur the lines between object, environment and experience. These exhibitions 鈥 spanning New York to Kyoto, Lisbon to London 鈥 invite viewers to step inside immersive worlds where light, sound and texture take on physical form. Whether exploring memory, ecology or colour itself, each show demonstrates the transformative power of art to alter how we see and feel the world around us.
Chiharu Shiota: Echoes Between
Templon, New York | 6 November 鈥 22 January
Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota (b. 1972) is internationally renowned for crafting vast, ephemeral, web-like environments. Her signature technique involves weaving knotted threads 鈥 often red, white or black 鈥 and integrating objects imbued with memory: window frames, discarded musical instruments, suitcases, keys, books and second-hand garments. Her monumental installations have been exhibited in museums worldwide, forming a singular body of work that explores existence, memory and transcendence. In聽Echoes Between, Shiota builds a radiant cloud of luminous fibre optic threads around two chairs. The show runs concurrently with her acclaimed exhibition,聽Two Home Countries,聽at the Japan Society in New York.
Carlos Cruz-Diez: Chromosaturation
P茅rez Art Museum Miami | Until 27 September
Carlos Cruz-Diez (1923-2019) was a pioneer of kinetic and optical art, known for participatory works grounded in colour and movement. Chromosaturation is considered his “most accomplished effort.” The installation consists of three interconnected chambers, each illuminated in a single hue: red, green and blue. It is testament to Cruz-Diez鈥檚 vital role in the experimental practices of the 1960s and 1970s, which shifted the聽focus away from static art objects, towards environments that engaged the body and senses. His radical approach was a precursor to today’s immersive art experiences. Initially conceived in 1965, Chromosaturation is being shown for the second time at PAMM, following its 2022 debut.
M谩ret 脕nne Sara: Goavve-Geabbil
Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, London | Until 6 April聽
This year, the 10th edition of Tate’s anticipated Hyundai Commission is presented by聽Northern S谩mi artist and author M谩ret 脕nne Sara. Sara makes art from materials which surround and sustain her community in S谩pmi, the territory of the Indigenous S谩mi people spanning Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. For her first major work in the UK, she draws on lived experiences as member of a reindeer herding family to highlight ecological issues impacting S谩mi life. A multi-layered sculpture comprising hides tightly bound by electrical power cables stretches the full 28-metre-height of the Turbine Hall. Meanwhile, at the east end of the space, visitors can move through a maze-like structure based on remarkable reindeer anatomy.
teamLab Biovortex Kyoto
Permanent Display
Biovortex Kyoto is the newest permanent art museum from lauded collective teamLab. It is is one of their largest museums in Japan, joining locations in Tokyo, Osaka and Okinawa. It spans over 10,000 square metres and featuring more than 50 artworks. Biovortex Kyoto features installations like Massless Amorphous Sculpture, a floating, immense sculpture that emerges from a sea of bubbles, and Forest of Resonating Lamps, in which coloured light is generated as people move around and interact聽with a seemingly infinite field of lamps. These are artworks you can touch and that respond to your presence. Founder Inoko Toshiyuki describes Biovortex Kyoto as “a place where where perception is expanded.”
Cerith Wyn Evans 鈥 Forms in Space鈥 through Light (in Time)
MAAT, Lisbon | Until 16 February
Cerith Wyn Evans (b. 1958) began his career in experimental cinema. In the 1990s, he moved towards a more in-depth investigation of language and perception, combining influences from cinema, music, literature and philosophy. A focal point in the exhibition 鈥 which is Wyn Evans’ first solo show in Portugal 鈥 is Forms in Space鈥 by Light (in Time), a monumental installation comprising of a complex grid of suspended white neon. It is the largest the artist has produced to date, composed of nearly two kilometres of tubes. Alongside these sculptures, the exhibition also includes sound works, installations and videos spanning from 1994 to 2025, through which visitors are invited to meander without a pre-established route.
Future Tense:聽Art in the Age of Transformation
York Art Gallery | Until 25 January
Future Tense聽is an exhibition dedicated to contemporary installation artists,聽presented alongside the聽Aesthetica聽Art Prize. It features Squidsoup, an artist collective who create immersive digital spaces utilising light, sound and space. Their piece, Submergence, has been exhibited on six continents across more than 100 locations, and features features over 8,000 individually suspended LEDs. Also on display is Liz West’s Our Spectral Vision,聽commissioned by the聽Natural History Museum, which draws on mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton鈥檚 experiments with refraction through prisms. It mixes luminous colour and radiant light, using a mixture of LED lamps and dichroic glass in the form of seven prisms.聽
Words: Eleanor Sutherland
Image Credits:
1. teamLab, Forest of Resonating Lamps: One Stroke – a Year in the Mountains, 2024-, from the series Forest of Resonating Lamps: One Stroke, 2016-, Interactive Installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi, Production Support: Hirohito Saito (OryZa Design), Shinya Yoshida (SYD INC.) 漏 teamLab, courtesy Pace Gallery.
2. Chiharu Shiota, Metamorphosis of Consciousness, 2025 Installation: mixed media Red Brick Museum, Beijing, China Photo Sunhi Mang 漏 ARS, New York, 2025 and the artist.
3. Carlos Cruz-Diez: Chromosaturation, 1965/2007, P茅rez Art Museum Miami, 2022鈥23. Photo: Oriol Tarridas.
4. Hyundai Commission: M谩ret 脕nne Sara: Goavve-Geabbil. Installation view featuring Goavve- at Tate Modern 2025. 漏 M谩ret 脕nne Sara. Photo 漏 Tate (Sonal Bakrania).
5. teamLab, Forest of Resonating Lamps: One Stroke – a Year in the Mountains, 2024-, from the series Forest of Resonating Lamps: One Stroke, 2016-, Interactive Installation, Endless, Sound: Hideaki Takahashi, Production Support: Hirohito Saito (OryZa Design), Shinya Yoshida (SYD INC.) 漏 teamLab, courtesy Pace Gallery.
6. Image聽courtesy of MAAT, Lisbon and Cerith Wyn Evans. Photography by Bruno Lopes.
7. Liz West, Our Spectral Vision. Installation view at York Art Gallery. Photography by Jim Poyner.
