Sonsbeek 2026
Memory as Living Action
Various locations, Arnhem
Jul 2–Oct 11

Sonsbeek—Europe’s oldest large-scale outdoor art exhibition—returns for its 13th edition, titled “Memory as Living Action,” to explore the unstable politics of space and collective consciousness. This year’s show features existing and newly commissioned works across installation, sculpture, and performance by 18 artists from the Netherlands and abroad—including Korakrit Arunanondchai, Mounira Al Solh, On Kawara, Loesje, and Jota Mombaça—probing the shared social mechanisms behind communal places and cultural memory. Unfolding across Park Sonsbeek as well as partner institutions and other citywide venues, the event invites visitors to imagine a civic life grounded in plurality and interdependence.

Chitra Ganesh
Journey to the Great Below
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
Jul 4–Jan 17, 2027

From giant disembodied hands to human-animal hybrids and vibrant foliage, Chitra Ganesh’s oeuvre blends motifs from historical literature, South Asian culture, and science fiction to address our contemporary condition of unrest. Her first major institutional show in the UK, “Journey to the Great Below,” debuts a titular animation exploring questions of femininity and power, inspired by The Descent of Inanna into the Underworld, an ancient poem about a Sumerian goddess’s encounters with the realm of the dead. Alongside a new site-specific mural and commissioned sculptures, the exhibition features an array of recent paintings, prints, and mixed-media works, speculating on a collective future that is not unsettled, but rather nurtured through upheaval. 

Park Chan-wook 
par un matin calme
Lee Ufan Arles
Jul 6–Oct 4

Unlike his stylized, psychological thrillers about humanity’s underbelly, South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s photographs are startlingly simple and unscripted. His first solo exhibition in Europe at Lee Ufan Arles gathers a selection of still images that foreground the quiet eccentricities of ordinary life, whether in a strangely spectral cluster of umbrellas; a bowl of decaying, ant-ridden fruits; or a discarded yellow net bunched up on an empty street. Titled “par un matin calme (On a quiet morning),” the presentation delves into Park’s self-described ethos of photography as an “antidote” to the calculated logic of filmmaking,

Isaac Chong Wai
An Intimate Surrender
Tai Kwun, Hong Kong
Jul 10–Aug 9

For his solo exhibition at Tai Kwun Contemporary, titled “An Intimate Surrender,” Isaac Chong Wai examines the tender violence within human relations through a new live art commission. The performance unfurls across the third-floor gallery, where dancers move through an immersive installation comprising metal frameworks, etched glass, mirrored panels, and textiles, which reference the physical infrastructure of film and theater scenes and gestures. Their choreographed motions draw on the 1993 historical drama Farewell My Concubine and Peking Opera, expressing the fluid nature of gender, corporeality, and memory, as well as the power dynamics that subtly inform our collective psyche.

Greg Girard
The Polygon Gallery, Vancouver
Jul 10–Oct 25

Known for his gritty yet cinematic snapshots of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tokyo, Greg Girard presents his first-ever survey, which traces more than four decades of his prolific career. Beginning in the mid-1970s, the Canadian photographer traveled extensively across Asia, documenting the rapid socioeconomic changes throughout various cities, with a particular focus on the textures of daily life in oft-overlooked communities and places—from dark alleys and quiet bars to the bustling sidewalks of Shibuya and Hong Kong’s infamous Kowloon Walled City. At once melancholic and vibrant, the photographs on view offer a rare glimpse into this transformative period in East Asian history, capturing the growing pains of urbanization at street level.

Tada Minami
Still, shimmering light
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Aug 29–Dec 6

Tada Minami’s “Still, shimmering light” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo is a major retrospective charting nearly seven decades of the late Japanese artist’s practice. The exhibition showcases photographs, sketches, and other archival materials alongside approximately 70 works, from early paintings to radiant wall panels and large-scale sculptures made of glass and stainless steel—including Frequency 373055MC (1963), an undulating metallic installation, and her towering Auspicious Clouds (1973). Through the interplay between space, light, and industrial matter, Tada’s architectural forms refract the staggering impact of modernization during Japan’s postwar era, rendering a nation in constant flux.