{"id":263582,"date":"2026-02-02T06:48:26","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T06:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/263582\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T06:48:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T06:48:26","slug":"the-10-exhibitions-to-see-in-february-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/263582\/","title":{"rendered":"The 10 Exhibitions to See in February 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our editors on the exhibitions they\u2019re looking forward to around the world this month, from London to Delhi<\/p>\n

\"\"Michael Joo, Crystal Noose, 1999, aluminium potassium sulfate crystals, flax rope, polycarbonate, aluminium, steel cable, glass, 80 x 18 x 18 in. Danny Moynihan Collection. Photo: Adam Reich<\/p>\n

New York, United States<\/p>\n

Michael Joo: Sweat Models 1991-2026
<\/a>
Under vinyl labels referencing Genghis Khan (the conqueror), Benedict Arnold (the traitor) and Michael Joo (the artist whose show this is), three glass beakers sit on a shelf holding preserved samples of Joo\u2019s urine. By turns revealing and coy, sterile and perverse, this work, Yellow, Yellower, Yellowest (1991), seems to take Piero Manzoni\u2019s Artist\u2019s Shit (1961) a playful step further by asking viewers to directly observe, compare and even contemplate its lewd specimens. The work and its implications regarding biology, empire, racialization and moral virtue appear in and throughout Sweat Models 1991-2026. Replete with trickles of artificial perspiration, a barrel of imitation tears, and facial measurements and calorie counts incised on aluminium, the show resembles a semi-organic body system. It reprises a selection of Joo\u2019s sculptural and conceptual output from thirty years ago \u2013 back when data, metrics and language models could still be conceived of at a modest scale and before biohacking went mainstream \u2013 while presenting some newly realised works such as Concatenations (2026), a vertical library of industrial baking trays striated with offerings of sundry personal artefacts. Jenny Wu<\/a><\/p>\n

Space ZeroOne, New York, 20 February \u2013 18 April<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Illustration by Nicolas Henri Jacob from Jean-Baptiste Marc Bourgery\u2019s Trait\u00e9 complet de l\u2019anatomie de l\u2019homme, 1866. Courtesy Mark Newton Photography<\/p>\n

Leeds, United Kingdom<\/p>\n

Beneath the Sheets<\/a>
Anatomy has a storied cast list in art history: Da Vinci\u2019s Vitruvian Man, Rembrandt\u2019s Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, Thomas Banks\u2019s James Legg<\/a>, Mapplethorpe\u2019s Ken Moody<\/a>, Tavares Strachan\u2019s Robert<\/a>. The penetrative urge, as the title of this new exhibition suggests, to get \u2018beneath the sheets\u2019 \u2013 of cotton, of skin \u2013 is plain. Opening up the Thackray Museum of Medicine\u2019s extensive anatomical artwork collection, Beneath the Sheets promises to apply today\u2019s politics to yesterday\u2019s anatomics, examining \u2018histories of body procurement and exploitation\u2019. Included are illustrations from Jean-Baptiste Marc Bourgery\u2019s anatomical atlas Trait\u00e9 complet de l\u2019anatomie de l\u2019homme (1866), showing decades of autopic research, illustrated by Nicolas Henri Jacob in by turns elegant and violent demonstrations. One presents four grey-cuffed hands clawing back at a prone, nude woman\u2019s dissected breast. Illustrations from Joseph Maclise\u2019s Surgical Anatomy (1851) includes what is considered the only Black body in Victorian anatomical atlases. In tandem, the artist Marlowe Mitchell will present a film commission responding to Thackray\u2019s archive. All while the body has once more become a point of contest in contemporary culture \u2013 its traumas, reclamations and erasures by technologies old and new. Alexander Leissle<\/a><\/p>\n

Thackray Museum of Medicine, Leeds, 7 February \u2013 21 June<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"A Wedding Suit, dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1976. Courtesy Janus Film<\/p>\n

London, United Kingdom<\/p>\n

Masterpieces of the Iranian New Wave
<\/a>
As anti-government protests continue in Iran, London\u2019s Barbican hosts a second season of Cinema-ye Motafavet, presenting 11 films from the era preceding the 1979 revolution. The programme includes Abbas Kiarostami\u2019s short A Wedding Suit (1976), Bahram Beyzaie\u2019s fabulist The Ballad of Tara (1979), and a short documentary that includes the only screen appearance of poet and filmmaker Forough Farrokhzad. Among such glimpses from the time that was are several rare and never-before seen films: The Ballad of Tara screens with the 18-minute fragments of what remains of Shahla Riahi\u2019s Marjan (1956), Iran\u2019s first feature film directed and produced by a woman, as the season hosts the first screening of the director\u2019s cut of Ebrahim Golestan\u2019s satire Secrets of the Jinn Valley Treasure (1974). There will also be a chance to see both the original banned ending and re-shot ending of Masoud Kimiai\u2019s The Deer (1974). Chris Fite-Wassilak<\/a><\/p>\n

Barbican Centre, London, 4\u201326 February<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Isaac Julien, Metamorphosis I (All That Changes You. Metamorphosis), 2025, inkjet print on Ilford gold fibre gloss mounted on aluminium, 150 x 200 cm. \u00a9 the artist. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro<\/p>\n

Isaac Julien: All That Changes You. Metamorphosis<\/a><\/p>\n

Filmmaker Isaac Julien uses the camera as a way to probe and recontextualise history, repositioning voices which may have been forgotten or erased across time, space and cultural memory. His five-screen installation, All That Changes You. Metamorphosis, (2025), was commissioned as an optic response to the Palazzo Te, a sixteenth-century Mannerist villa in Mantua, Italy. It\u2019s a stunning, shape-shifting narrative that sees architectural spaces, from ornate Renaissance frescos to the postmodern interiors of Charles Jencks\u2019s Cosmic House in London,\u00a0collapse and reform around two protagonists played by Sheila Atim and Gwendoline Christie. The film \u2013 a sort of posthumanist visual poem \u2013 draws on Ovid\u2019s opus as well as ideas from thinkers like Octavia Butler, Naomi Mitchison, Ursula K. Le Guin and Donna Haraway, woven throughout the dialogue. After its run in Italy, the work will be presented for the first time in London across five screens at Victoria Miro. Chiara Wilkinson<\/a><\/p>\n

Victoria Miro, London, 13 February \u2013 21 March<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Bouchra Khalili, The Circle, 2023, still. Courtesy the artist<\/p>\n

Bouchra Khalili: Circles and Storytellers
<\/a>
London\u2019s Mosaic Rooms reopens this month under new direction and a renovation replete with a salon event space, \u2018Play Room\u2019, live-radio station and expanded bookshop \u2013 rejoining the city\u2019s growing field of non-profit art spaces. Kicking things off is an exhibition of films by Bouchra Khalili, a hugely influential figure in postcolonial art receiving her first solo exhibition in the UK. Circles and Storytellers will conclude the artist\u2019s multi-year project \u2013 studying the Mouvement des Travailleurs Arabes, the 1970s Maghrebi social justice and activist group \u2013 which began at Documenta 14. Alexander Leissle<\/a><\/p>\n

Mosaic Rooms, London, 18 February \u2013 14 June<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Courtesy Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul<\/p>\n

Porto Alegre, Brazil<\/p>\n

Nervo \u00d3ptico 50 anos \u2013 Um manifesto
<\/a>
In 1978, Brazil\u2019s so-called \u2018years of lead\u2019, the most repressive period of the country\u2019s military dictatorship, were beginning to ease. That freedom bred the beginnings of an art market, with commercial galleries setting up in the major cities. Porto Alegre, in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, was no exception, but a group of local artists recognised that within the professionalisation, as art became a product divorced from its process of production, something was getting lost. Carlos Asp, Carlos Pasquetti, Cl\u00f3vis Dariano, Jesus Escobar<\/a>, Mara \u00c1lvares, Telmo Lanes, Romanita Disconzi and Vera Chaves Barcello wrote and signed a manifesto describing instead a continuing process in which art is \u2018consumed\u2019 by its maker during its production and by the viewer through their active participation in that process. A series of happenings was initiated, starting with a two day event at the Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul (MARGS) featuring games, performances, super-8 films and slides. Members of the group went on to produce a monthly visual poetry magazine, Nervo Optico, which took the form of poster poems. Returning to MARGS half a century later, surviving members of the group will assemble to look back on this avant-garde moment \u2013\u00a0even if their efforts in stemming the tide of art\u2019s commercialisation weren\u2019t entirely successful. Oliver Basciano<\/a><\/p>\n

Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, through 26 April<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Takehiro Iikawa, Decorator Crab \u2013 Mr. Kobayashi the Pink Cat, 2022 (installation view, the Hakone Open-Air Museum, Kanagawa). Photo: Takafumi Sakanaka. Courtesy the artist<\/p>\n

Mito, Japan<\/p>\n

Takehiro Iikawa: Gathering Matters and Mediations
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Takehiro Iikawa\u2019s practice deals with \u2018the relativity of time and fluctuations in perception\u2019, but his best known work is probably his big hot-pink cat \u2018Mr. Kobayashi\u2019 (Decorator Crab series, 2017\u2013ongoing) that lurks around galleries and other public spaces, tucked in narrow hallways or peeping out from pinewoods so that it\u2019s impossible to see its pensive, dumbfounded face (\u2267\u25c9A\u25c9\u2266) in its entirety. Iikawa\u2019s upcoming exhibition at Art Tower Mito will stage a comprehensive overview of his practice, his \u2018rule-based structures\u2019 and \u2018scenes\u2019 that give rise to \u2018realisations\u2019 resisting easy communication. \u2018When we stumble upon something so completely unexpected \u2013 a strikingly vivid experience that leaves us raw with emotion,\u2019 the exhibition asks, \u2018how can we convey those feelings to others who have not shared them?\u2019 Perhaps, once you have the chance of meeting Mr. Kobayashi, you can never go back to not having met him. Yuwen Jiang<\/a><\/p>\n

Art Tower Mito, 28 February \u2013 6 May<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Graciela Iturbide, Our Lady of the Iguanas, Juchit\u00e1n, Oaxaca, Mexico, 1979, gelatin silver print. \u00a9 the artist. Courtesy Museum of Photographic Arts at The San Diego Museum of Art <\/p>\n

Berlin, Germany; San Diego, United States<\/p>\n

Graciela Iturbide<\/p>\n

Across two concurrent exhibitions in Berlin and San Diego, Graciela Iturbide\u2019s photographs, primarily taken in Mexico, trace the fragile thresholds where ritual and everyday life meet. Her black-and-white pictures record bodies, landscapes and objects via an eye that is attentive to the way movement and meaning emerge from gesture, shadow and repetition. At C\/O Berlin, her first major retrospective in the capital city, Iturbide will present iconic series such as Juchit\u00e1n de las Mujeres (1979\u20131988), which documents a social world shaped by female autonomy, plurality and resilience, alongside photographs that have rarely been displayed. Meanwhile, her survey show at San Diego Museum of Art will include later works \u2013 pared-back images of birds, roads, tools and desert terrains that edge toward abstraction and charged symbolism. Photography it seems, for Iturbide, is less an act of capture than of accompaniment: it insists on slowness, reciprocity and ethical attention, a way of staying with people and places as witness. Fi Churchman<\/a><\/p>\n

C\/O Berlin, 7 February \u2013 10 June<\/a>
Museum Photographic Arts, San Diego, 14 February \u2013 7 June<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Claudio Parmiggiani, Globo, 1968 crumpled globe, glass vase, 25 x 12 cm. \u00a9 the artist. Courtesy Archivio Claudio Parmiggiani and Bortolami Gallery, New York<\/p>\n

Naples, Italy<\/p>\n

Atlante<\/a><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve come up with plenty of structures \u2013 passports, visas, checkpoints, walls \u2013 to make national borders seem immutable. Yet all it takes is the toddlerlike fingers of egomaniac politicians to scribble new lines onto maps to (militarily) reconfigure the freedom of movement across territories. In Atlante, curator James Lingwood brings together drawings, paintings, weavings, sculptures and photographs that reveal the subjectivity and inherent violence of maps. Among them, Claudio Parmiggiani\u2019s deflated globe stuffed into a mason jar (Globo, 1968) counters typically conquering depictions of the earth; Igshaan Adams\u2019s tapestry based on satellite views of the Bonteheuwel neighbourhood of Cape Town (Keeping Light,2025) highlights well-trodden desire paths as opposed to the legally-enforced segregation of geography during apartheid and Teju Cole\u2019s photography book of Switzerland (Fernweh, 2020), that combines pictures of maps, topography and intimate fragments of space, reflects on how the experience of place is mediated by images. Mia Stern<\/a><\/p>\n

Thomas Dane Gallery, Naples, 3 February \u2013 5 May<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Atul Dodiya, Always Looking, 2025, oil on canvas, 213 \u00d7 152 cm. Courtesy the artist and Vadehra Art Gallery, Delhi<\/p>\n

Delhi, India<\/p>\n

Atul Dodiya: The Gatecrasher
<\/a>
Sometimes it\u2019s just about being there. Staying present. Living in the moment. Mumbai born-and-based Atul Dodiya\u2019s upcoming solo exhibition foregrounds the experience of engaging with art \u2013 a theme easily traced through his career spanning over four decades. In 2014 at his exhibition at Mumbai\u2019s Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, 7000 Museums: A Project For The Republic Of India, Dodiya staged cabinets filled with grouped objects referencing art history and pop culture amidst the museum\u2019s own vitrines, speaking to the acts of collection and display that produce values and narratives. Dodiya\u2019s upcoming The Gatecrasher continues the rumination on gallery spaces and being inside them. Of the 12 new paintings that will be on view, Always Looking (2025), for example, pictures from behind a man beholding a Matisse; he\u2019s sandwiched between the painting and his own backheld hands, which appear to be turning into a pair clipped from Picasso\u2019s Guernica (1937). Meanwhile the title and a barcode are painted over the scene, allowing the viewer\u2019s process of looking to become part of that economy of layered gazes. Yuwen Jiang<\/a><\/p>\n

Vadehra Art Gallery, Delhi, 3 February\u201310 March<\/a><\/p>\n

Read next The Exhibitions and Biennials to See in 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

ArtReview<\/a>Previews<\/a>January 30, 2026artreview.com