Biodiseño MX: Living Territories explores Mexican biodesign
 
Curated by Taina Campos, Biodiseño MX: Territorios Vivos brings together more than 74 works by over 60 creatives, including Fernando Laposse, Resting Reef, Emiliano Godoy, Edith Medina, and Javier Senosiain, alongside emerging designers and interdisciplinary collectives. Hosted at Mexico City’s Museo Franz Mayer, the exhibition is organized into five thematic sections, Flora, Fauna, Microbia, Funga, and Bioinspiration, examining how living systems can participate in creative processes and prompting a reconsideration of the relationship between design and ecosystems.
 
At its core, Biodiseño MX: Territorios Vivos proposes a design approach...

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Da oltre quarant’anni Antony Gormley assume il corpo come punto di partenza della propria ricerca, senza mai ridurlo a una semplice figura. Lo considera piuttosto una misura attraverso cui interrogare spazio, materia e condizione umana. In What Holds Us, la mostra presentata da Galleria Continua a San Gimignano, questa riflessione trova una formulazione particolarmente essenziale. Più che introdurre nuovi temi, il progetto approfondisce una domanda che attraversa l’intero lavoro dell’artista: quali relazioni rendono possibile la presenza di un corpo nello spazio?
Antony Gormley, “What Holds Us”, 2026, installation view at Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, photo Ela Bialkowska – OKNO Studio,...

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Love Hultén keeps building machines that ask us to play
 
Every new Love Hultén project begins with a familiar contradiction. His latest commission, a custom-built synthesizer housed in a handcrafted mahogany console, looks as though it has traveled from an alternate version of the 1970s. Built around Black Corporation’s Deckard’s Dream, it features a motorized pull-out keyboard, rows of tactile sliders, and a CRT-inspired display that feels lifted from a forgotten recording studio. It is unmistakably contemporary, yet it doesn’t behave like contemporary technology.
 
The instrument joins an expanding collection of bespoke machines: a crane-operated record player, a synthesizer animated by a dancing...

Betye Saar, who trawled the depraved archive of Americana and transmuted its most vile depictions of Blackness into conceptually freighted assemblages that are mystical, moving, and revolutionary, died at 99 in Los Angeles yesterday, July 26. Her death was confirmed by Roberts Projects, which represented her. 

Betye Saar, the Los Angeles–based artist whose assemblages powerfully tackled the brutality of racism and anti-Blackness and the stereotypes they engender, died in her sleep in the early hours of Sunday, July 26, her gallery Robert Projects announced. She was 99 years old, and just four days shy of turning 100 on July 30.  Across seven decades, Saar created a body of work that used a wide variety of materials—often found objects like furniture, statuettes, feathers, and more—and arranged them in such a way that helped give them new meaning, all the while elucidating the pervasiveness of racism in the US. Her most famous work is arguably The Liberation of Aunt Jemima (1972). At the center of the work is...

Some of the most memorable moments from the congressional hearing, ranked on the basis of impact (edit Rhea Nayyar/Hyperallergic, all screenshots via YouTube)Last week, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform grilled National Museum of American History (NMAH) Director Anthea Hartig during a congressional hearing on allegations outlined in the White House's 162-page July report that accused the Smithsonian Institution (SI) of promoting “extreme political activism." As one would expect, the hearing rapidly devolved into explosive statements tumbling out of the mouths of the Republican committee members before Hartig could answer a majority of the questions — each more accusatory and...

The discovery deep inside a sinkhole in Playa del Carmen has prompted a new research project to date and protect the remains

The French government has announced the implementation of a national museum and monument security plan, after investigators arrested and detained a suspect in connection with Friday’s theft of a Celtic princess’s golden necklace from a museum in Burgundy, reported Le Figaro. The 10:30 am robbery on July 24 has shocked France’s museum world, because the stolen 2,500-year-old, 24-karat golden torque from the Vix Treasure archaeological site was a unique example of Celtic life in the region, offering clues into the 6th-century BCE princess who is thought to have worn it. Also, the perpetrators got away with their crime by simply acting like tourists. Around 10 a.m., they entered the Musée du Pays...

As audiences flock to theaters to watch Christopher Nolan's reimagining of Odysseus' journey home from the Trojan War, Elon Musk has begun waging a battle of his own against the director. Taking to X on July 21, Musk promised to use his AI platform, Grok Imagine, to create his own full-length version of The Odyssey by the end of this year.

Exitprojectes Extends Josep Lluís Sert’s coastal Casa Blajot
 
In Premià de Dalt, a small town on the Maresme coast north of Barcelona, Spanish practice Exitprojectes has completed the rehabilitation and extension of Casa Blajot, one of the last houses designed by architect Josep Lluís Sert before his death in 1983. Built between 1978 and 1979 for lawyer Josep Blajot, in close collaboration with the architect Joseph Zalewski, the house stands as a late and highly personal statement within Sert’s body of work, a compact, sculptural volume set into a steep hillside, oriented toward distant views of the Mediterranean Sea.
 
Rather than approaching the commission as an opportunity to reinterpret or update...

In 1846, the Smithsonian Institution was established, in the words of its benefactor and namesake, British scientist James Smithson, “for the increase & diffusion of Knowledge among men.” Today, the 21 museums centered in Washington, DC, and more than 200 affiliates throughout the United States, have indeed increased and diffused knowledge in the maintenance of an astounding 157 million objects. Along with the preservation and distribution of knowledge — never a neutral term — these museums have been the site of discourse and debate, conversation and controversy, as any indispensable cultural institution should be. Over their long history, museums have “evolved to become institutions in which objects...

A nude Black woman lies on a stark white chaise, her head propped up by her thin arm. She’s surrounded by flat, abstracted color in the form of fruits and fabrics, and a glass coupe and bottle on a nearby table offer a clear, rather than refracted, view of the vibrant scene. Rendered in oil on burlap, the painting by William H. Johnson is commanding in its palette and subject matter and an exemplary work in a new book by art historian Richard J. Powell. Forthcoming this fall from Princeton University Press, Colorstruck! Painting, Pigment, Affect delves into the ways that color and social, political, and cultural forces intersect in Black American art. Powell takes an expansive approach to each of the three...

On Sunday July 26, the photographer Spencer Tunick organized one of the large-scale nude happenings for which he has become known over the past several decades. Tunick’s latest eye-catching gathering took place in Las Palmas, the capital city of Gran Canaria, one of Spain’s Canary Islands. The one-day “collective art action” was called Gran Spectrum, and according to El Pais, it involved around 400–500 participants. Unlike most of Tunick’s previous actions, in which he photographed unadorned nude bodies, or those decorated with a more monochromatic palette, the Gran Spectrum volunteers’ nude bodies were painted in an array of 11 rainbow colors from the Pride flag: not just your Roy G. Biv but...

President Trump has ordered federal officials to install content warning labels outside the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH) after his administration accused the institution of “anti-white” practices. The order, issued on Friday, July 24, compels the Department of the Interior (DOI) to place “temporary signage along the NPS-maintained sidewalks and walkways used by the public to access the Museum.” The new signage would display the findings from the administration’s recent 162-page report blasting the NMAH for its alleged “extreme political activism.”A spokesperson for the White House declined to provide information on when those signs would go up. The Smithsonian also...

On July 24, President Donald Trump issued an executive order demanding the installation of temporary signs outside the Smithsonian National Museum of American History alerting the public to the “ideological capture” of the institution. The order represents a marked escalation in the president’s sustained attack on the Smithsonian, which he sees as embodying ideals out of step […]

“Danger” is a word often associated with the candy-colored work of Los Angeles artist Kristen Liu-Wong. Her feminine tableaus, often rendered in a bright blend of acrylics, paint pen, and marker, have particularly veered into more menacing territory in recent years. “The world is a dangerous place,” Liu-Wong says, in a June interview. “I don’t […]
The post Dont Tempt Me: the Art of Kristen Liu-Wong first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

A UNESCO committee voted on Friday to add an archaeological site in the occupied West Bank and a complex of castles in southern Lebanon to its World Heritage List and List of World Heritage in Danger, despite objections from Israel. The vote took place at a meeting of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Busan, South Korea, as Israel’s Foreign Ministry urged the committee to reject calls to inscribe the West Bank town of Sebastia and five castles in Lebanon’s Mount Amel area, characterizing their nomination as a “weaponization of cultural heritage.” The committee voted to add both sites to the World Heritage List and the List of World Heritage in Danger, citing the emergency...

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On paper, Nathan Reidt’s creatures sometimes reveal themselves through a fog of graphite. He may begin with a “vague, circle-y shape” and shade areas. “Then I just stare at it for a long time and wait for something to pop out and refine that a little and stare at it.” The Philadelphia-based artist explains by […]
The post Personal Growth: the Art of Nathan Reidt first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

RECLAIMING SEOUL’S DORMANT WATERFRONT
 
Snøhetta’s Banpo Ecological Playscape imagines the edge of Seoul’s Hangang River as a layered public landscape where wetlands, cultural spaces and elevated pathways overlap. Developed for the international Banpo–Hangang River Connection Park and Cultural Facilities competition in 2024, the proposal reached the final round but was not selected for construction. Its architectural afterlife therefore exists on paper, where roads are slightly easier to move and urban wounds rather more willing to heal.
 
Spanning 38,000 square meters beside the Hangang riverside park and above the Olympic-daero expressway, the design sought to reconnect the Banpo neighborhood with...

Lydia Yee, formerly chief curator at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, has just been appointed the artistic director of a new, nonprofit gallery in Kuala Lumpur. The gallery, Muara Arts, will be dedicated to celebrating modern and contemporary art from Southeast Asia. Muara Arts will open November 1 of this year, and the gallery will […]

Researchers from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) finished a holistic survey of an area beneath Mexico City’s Centro Historico that long ago served as the home of the sacred precinct of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan. As reported by Heritage Daily, the project undertaken as part of INAH’s Urban Archaeology Program to identify buried pre-Hispanic structures beneath the city’s streets is “expected to improve the protection of archaeological remains during future infrastructure and construction projects.” Instead of excavation, the archaeologists studied changes in ground elevation, street gradients, building inclinations, and structural cracks to deduce where walls and...

Another day, another French jewelry heist. On Friday July 24 a 2,500-year-old gold collar was stolen from the archaeological museum, Musée du Pays Châtillonnais in Châtillon-sur-Seine.  According to Artnews, the collar was taken at 10:30 AM, after the thieves paid the admission fee and entered the museum as tourists. The burglars subsequently smashed the display case […]

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Tate Modern's Light & Magic reconsiders Pictorialism as a global movement through 200 rare vintage photographs from around the world.

More than three hundred unionized workers at the Victoria & Albert Museum are set to vote on a strike action spurred by the broiling heat that has enveloped the city in recent weeks, The Guardian reports. Staffers from across the institution’s four London sites—the museum in South Kensington, V&A East Museum and V&A East Storehouse in Stratford, and […]

The Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) has revealed the 63 participant galleries selected for the inaugural ADAA Fair at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. The fair, which is set to run from November 13–16 this year, represents a new chapter for the ADAA, a nonprofit membership organization which comprises approximately 200 fine […]

The Barbican is inviting designers from around the world to reimagine its public furniture as part of its landmark £231 million Renewal programme.

world heritage list 2026
 
UNESCO’s newest World Heritage inscriptions stretch across very different ideas of what architecture can preserve. One nomination gathers thirteen buildings by Alvar Aalto and his collaborators across Finland. Another follows porcelain from clay extraction to kiln innovation in Jingdezhen. Elsewhere, entire city centers, theater networks, fortified ridges, and colonial plantation settlements enter the list as connected systems.
 
The World Heritage Committee added twenty-five sites during its 48th session, held in Busan from July 19th — July 29th, 2026. Nineteen are cultural sites. Five are natural, while the wider area of Mount Olympus is the sole mixed property. For an...

Since 1998, Fumiaki Aono has been interested in how objects circulate and what happens when they appear in new contexts. Questions of restoration and regeneration naturally followed, and wood became a prime medium for exploring these themes. Today, Aono continues to revitalize found objects, particularly discarded furniture. Dressers, chests, and cabinets stack into towering assemblages and become the imaginative backdrop for the artist’s constructed scenes. Converted drawers appear like apartment buildings on a summer day, with tenants leaning out windows and hanging out at street level. Several works also depict box trucks and other vehicles emerging from wooden furnishings, while bicycles, hats, and shoes...

Works by the London-based Iraqi artist and 29 other artists from the Arab world will be sold to help humanitarian organisations working in Beirut and beyond

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The New York fair is coming back to the Park Avenue Armory with 63 exhibitors after a 'strategic pause', as executive director Kinsey Robb says the focus is on value for galleries rather than scale

Luke Jerram's seven-metre Earth artwork GAIA will transform the Royal Festival Hall during a weekend of BBC Concert Orchestra performances.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds return to Brighton for their only UK show of 2026, with a weekend of special events across the city

Low, who is the creative director of Factory International in Manchester, will lead the artistic team for the prominent Australian biennial’s 26th edition

João Daniel Pereira  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
João Daniel Pereira’s Website
João Daniel Pereira on Instagram

Wolf Trap Opera presented a lovely Eugene Onegin with particularly noteworthy performances by Magdalena Kuźma and Daniel O’Hearn.

Harley Weir's portrait of Charli xcx has gone on display at the National Portrait Gallery as the latest acquisition through the Collecting the Now fund.

Founded in 1980, the organisation has also developed a Green Manifesto to guide artist members toward a more environmentally responsible practice

Lorenzo Molajoli is a mysterious figure.

Esistono immagini che non si limitano a rappresentare il reale, ma ne sospendono la consistenza fenomenica per restituirlo come esperienza critica dello sguardo. Mediterraneo, il progetto che Mimmo Jodice torna a consegnare al pubblico nella grande mostra curata da Carlo Sala a Palazzo Lanfranchi (Matera), la prima ampia esposizione istituzionale a lui dedicata dopo la sua scomparsa, appartiene a questa rara condizione dell’immagine: non descrive il passato, ma ne riattiva la presenza, trasformando l’archeologia in una pratica della contemporaneità.
Mimmo Jodice, “Mediterraneo”, installation view at Palazzo Lanfranchi, Matera, ph. Antonello Di Gennaro, courtesy Musei Nazionali di Matera – Palazzo...

Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer's bubbly The Judgement of Paris brings a distinctly Californian terroir to operatic comedy.

Tobias Picker and Aryeh Lev Stollman's Lili Elbe receives its first recording ahead of its stateside transition.

Based on exactly one recording, Maurice Abravanel is my favorite opera conductor.

Lo scorso 12 dicembre è scomparso all’età di 89 anni l’artista e fotografo emiliano Franco Vaccari (Modena, 1936-2025); per ricordarlo, Museion, il museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Bolzano, ha allestito una mostra, la prima in assoluto dopo la sua morte, intitolata “Feedback. Gli Ambienti di Franco Vaccari”, a cura di Frida Carazzato e Luca Panaro, visitabile fino al 13 settembre 2026.
“Feedback. The Environments of Franco Vaccari”, exhibition view at Museion, 2026. Photo: Luca Guadagnini, courtesy Museion, Bolzano
Mosso dall’iniziale interesse verso la “poesia visiva” e per quelle che amava definire “forme anonime di poesia”, Franco Vaccari era attratto dai segni apparentemente...

The small settlement of Pyramiden on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard is literally frozen in time. A former mining outpost for the Soviet Union, industrial operations ceased in 1998, and residents relocated. It wasn’t until 2007 that a handful of new inhabitants made the settlement home. Because Pyramiden was abandoned in a cold climate, it remains impeccably preserved, with remnants of its once-thriving settlement still visible. French photographer Damien Aubin visited the Arctic region and documented the still, serene environment blanketed in snow. “The place has not been abandoned. It has been left in suspension,” he says. Classroom, Pyramiden Pyramiden’s buildings and the objects inside are...

“When I was really little, I wanted to be one of those stackable chairs you’d see in like a school auditorium,” Felicia Chiao says. “I thought they looked cozy.” This childhood memory is the basis for a playful drawing in which Chiao’s signature characters mound atop one another. Layering reigns in this imagined world as calendars and clocks emerge from the wall in dense piles, while stacks of books and dishes rest on the floor. Chiao is known for her warm illustrations that capture emotion and the variances of mental health through surreal, flower-filled scenes. Working in pencil, ink, and watercolor, the artist renders compositions that feel both timeless and indicative of our current age, in...

Colossal has always called Chicago home. We love highlighting artists and designers in our own community, and the Colossal Shop’s newest collection brings our creative neighbors to a wider global audience. This selection features one-of-a-kind and handmade objects from Chicago-based artists we’re excited to share a city with. From unique ceramic forms to thoughtfully designed apparel, there’s something exciting for everyone. Shop the collection now. Periwinkle Ripple Mugs With rhythmic, stacked silhouettes and looping handles, these one-of-a-kind mugs turn morning coffees into a sculptural experience. Created as a series of 8 exclusively for Colossal, each retro-futuristic mug is uniquely hand-thrown...

Julian Adon Alexander  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Julian Adon Alexander’s Website
Julian Adon Alexander on Instagram

Nella cultura odierna orientata all’immagine, gli artisti sono costantemente circondati da riferimenti visivi – dai feed dei social media, alle scene cinematografiche, dalla storia dell’arte e dagli archivi personali. Il curatore e critico francese Nicolas Bourriaud ha descritto questo approccio come “postproduzione”: gli artisti non creano più da zero, ma rimescolano e reinterpretano immagini e simboli culturali esistenti. L’ascesa di Internet ha solo intensificato questo processo. Gli artisti contemporanei ora lavorano con flussi infiniti di immagini online, fotografie trovate e materiali d’archivio, citandoli, rimescolandoli e riappropriandosene mentre li caricano di significati...

By Betty Ann Brown "Beauty comes from the balance between two and three dimensions, between abstraction and representation — I seek the equilibrium behind changing appearances."—Henri Matisse Jill sykes by Eric Minh Swenson Jill Sykes creates beautiful paintings of botanical phenomena. Like Matisse, she translates three-dimensional objects into two-dimensional images, occupying the territory between abstraction and representation to achieve balance and equilibrium. From a very early age,...

C’è una linea invisibile ma potentissima che unisce la frazione di un secondo in cui scatta l’otturatore di una macchina fotografica e la durata temporale di una nota musicale. Luigi Ghirri, tra i più grandi maestri della fotografia contemporanea, definiva questo legame una «strana e misteriosa parentela». Per esplorare questa sinergia profonda, Palazzo dei Musei di Reggio Emilia ha inaugurato la mostra Luigi Ghirri. A Series of Dreams. Paesaggi visivi e paesaggi sonori, un ambizioso percorso espositivo curato da Ilaria Campioli e Andrea Tinterri, con la curatela musicale di Giulia Cavaliere.
Luigi Ghirri, “A Series of Dreams”, installation view, photo Iacopo Pasqui, courtesy Musei Civici di Reggio...

All images courtesy of CHOI&CHOI Gallery and the artist Sculptor Yu Jinyoung garnered international acclaim for her striking figures, whose bodies are often partially transparent. These are individuals “who wish to become invisible,” she says: “those who exist free from external attention and interference.” These explorations of both intentional isolation and somber loneliness have always […]
The post The Once Invisible Figures of Yu JinYoung first appeared on Hi-Fructose Magazine.

Aaron Agosto  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Aaron Agosto’s Website
Aaron Agosto on Instagram

By Victoria Thomas There's something about a hanging. Whether legal or not, the visual experience seems mythic, supernatural, theatrical, and ritualistic, versus the efficiency of a swift kill. If local authorities greenlight the killing, it's called a hanging. If they don't, the hanging is extrajudicial, and it's called a lynching. Anyone with even the scantiest grasp of American history will know that our country has a sordid romance with lynching — a romance which persists. And unless...

Common Objects brings together the work of 97 photographers from across the globe to explore the role of the image and its ability to shape perception. Organized not by theme or geography but by visual association, the book draws on the logic of the reference catalog—a structure built for sustained, democratic looking. Within it, photographs from vastly different cultures and contexts find themselves in unexpected proximity, generating connections and contrasts that no single image could produce alone. In this format, the photographs enter into a subtle dialogue with one another, revealing how context, sequence, and framing shape interpretation and inform visual experience.  
   
   
   
   
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Claudia Koh  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
Claudia Koh on Instagram