Apr. 1, 2026
This spring, Berlin Art Link shines a spotlight on international exhibitions and events with our list of Top Exhibitions. We want to highlight artists, galleries, museums and new projects touching on a variety of topics, employing multiple media and featuring diverse subjects. Below are some of the stand-outs that we’ve selected running through the months of April, May and June.
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza
Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk: ‘Pedagogies of War’
Exhibition: Mar. 3-June 21, 2026
tba21.org
P.º del Prado, 8, Centro, 28014 Madrid, Spain, click here for map
Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk’s ‘Pedagogies of War’ examines how violence reorganizes perception, conduct and collective life before it can be fully articulated. Rather than treating war as a discrete event, it approaches it as an operative system that disciplines bodies, recalibrates attention and infiltrates everyday existence. Through audiovisual works, the artists reveal how violence and material pressures fracture daily rhythms and democratic structures. Their practice highlights the fragility of peace, the aesthetics of emergency and the tension between forgetting and remembering. ‘Pedagogies of War’ suggests that ecologies of conflict shape identity as profoundly as geography. Resisting spectacle and monumental narratives, it foregrounds lived experience over representation. Curated by Chus Martínez and presented at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in collaboration with TBA21, the exhibition brings together four works, including the new commission ‘We Didn’t Start This War’ (2026).
Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei: ‘You Shouldn’t Have to See This,’ 2024, KV Hannover // © Mathias Voelzke
Whitney Museum of American Art
Group Show: ‘Whitney Biennial 2026’
Exhibition: Mar. 8-Aug. 23, 2026
whitney.org
99 Gansevoort St, New York, NY 10014, USA, click here for map
Whitney Biennial’s 82nd edition tunes into the current moment and examines various forms of relationality, including interspecies kinships, familial relations, geopolitical entanglements, technological affinities, shared mythologies and infrastructural supports. Co-organized by Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, the exhibition brings together 56 artists, duos and collectives across most of the Whitney Museum’s galleries. The featured works offer a survey of contemporary American art shaped by a moment of profound transition, capturing the complexity of the present and proposing imaginative, unruly and unexpected forms of coexistence. Rather than offering a definitive answer to life today, this biennial edition foregrounds mood and texture, inviting visitors into environments that evoke tension, tenderness, humor and unease. The artist lineup includes Agosto Machado, Andrea Fraser, Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Martine Gutierrez, Precious Okoyomon, Samia Halaby and Sung Tieu. The Biennial is accompanied by performance and public programs onsite and online.
Whitney Biennial 2026, installation view at Whitney Museum of American Art // Photo by Jason Lowrie/BFA.com. © BFA 2026
Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art
Group Show: ‘Yield Strength’
Exhibition: Feb. 27-June 8, 2026
agsa.sa.gov.au
490 North Terrace, Adelaide SA 5000, Australia, click here for map
The 19th edition of the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, titled ‘Yield Strength,’ brings together 24 artists across multiple venues to examine how materials, identities and social structures are tested and transformed under pressure. Spanning the Art Gallery of South Australia, Samstag Museum of Art and Adelaide Botanic Garden, the exhibition presents newly commissioned works by Robert Andrew, d harding, Archie Moore, Julie Nangala Robertson and others. Through immersive and layered installations, the Biennial considers tension as a generative force, shaping new forms, meanings and relationships.
Adelaide Biennial, 2026, installation view // Photo by Saul Steed
National Portrait Gallery
Catherine Opie: ‘To Be Seen’
Exhibition: Mar. 5-May 31, 2026
npg.org.uk
St. Martin’s Pl, London WC2H 0HE, UK, click here for map
Catherine Opie’s ‘To Be Seen’ is her first major UK museum exhibition, presented at the National Portrait Gallery. Spanning over 30 years, it explores themes of identity, intimacy, politics and power through portraiture. Opie highlights diverse subjects, such as queer communities, artists and everyday individuals, often including herself. Key works like ‘Being and Having’ (1991) and her portraits of LGBTQ+ friends inspired by court painter Hans Holbein, are featured in the show. The exhibition connects portraits across time to challenge traditional representation in art, while additional installations place her work in dialogue with the gallery’s permanent collection.
Catherine Opie: ‘To Be Seen,’ 2026, installation view at the National Portrait Gallery // Photo © David Parry/ National Portrait Gallery
Kunstmuseum Basel
Cao Fei: ‘Testimonies to the Near Future’
Exhibition: May 30-Oct. 11, 2026
kunstmuseumbasel.ch
St. Alban-Graben 16, 4051 Basel, Switzerland, click here for map
For her first solo exhibition in Switzerland, Cao Fei transforms the Kunstmuseum Basel Gegenwart into an immersive, city-like environment spanning three floors. Titled ‘Testimonies to the Near Future,’ the exhibition brings together key works from the past two decades—including ‘Whose Utopia’ (2006), ‘RMB City’ (2007–) and ‘Nova’ (2019–)—alongside large-scale installations that extend her video and virtual worlds into physical space. Known for blending documentary sensibilities with speculative and surreal elements, Cao Fei examines the impact of rapid technological and societal change on everyday life, exploring themes of labor, identity and globalization.
Cao Fei: ‘Asia One,’ 2018 // Courtesy of the artist, Vitamin Creative Space, and Sprüth Magers, commissioned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York for The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Initiative
Seo-Seoul Museum of Art
Group Show: ‘《Mneme Topos》’
Exhibition: Mar. 12-July 12, 2026
‘SeMA Performance: Breathing’
Exhibition: Mar. 12-Apr. 12
sema.seoul.go.kr
65, Siheung-daero 79-gil, Geumcheon-gu, Seoul, Korea, click here for map
Marking the opening of Seo SeMA, two exhibitions will take place in the new space. ‘SeMA Performance: Breathing’ brings together 27 artists and collectives to explore the relationship between the body, society and art through the concept of “breathing” as an organic movement. The exhibition views air as a medium for movement, perception and life, raising questions about coexistence and human impact on the environment. Using diverse media, it creates new connections between humans and the world, while highlighting contemporary performance practices focused on time, space and human action and supporting artistic experimentation and new creative production. The exhibition group exhibition ‘《Mneme Topos》,’ opening at the same time, explores layered narratives of time embedded in the museum’s construction and the surrounding southwestern region. It presents these as records of memory, examining how histories accumulate and interact. Through artworks that reinterpret Western Seoul’s evolving identity—shaped by emergence, disappearance and temporal gaps—the exhibition creates connections between past and present. It builds a multidimensional understanding of time, space and collective memory tied to the museum and its community. By extending displays into transitional areas like lobbies and courtyards, it redefines exhibition space and encourages new, immersive ways of experiencing art.
Gropius Bau
Marina Abramović: ‘Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition’
Exhibition: Apr. 15-Aug. 23, 2026
berlinerfestspiele.de
Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin, Germany, click here for map
Installed across Gropius Bau’s 10 rooms, the atrium and the in-house restaurant Beba, Marina Abramović’s ‘Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition’ showcases what the artist herself has described as the most ambitious work of her career. Bringing together pieces from the 1970s to today, the show traces several key themes in Abramović’s oeuvre: rituals, histories and mythologies of the Balkans, the connection between eroticism and death, and the body as a site of political resistance. It also draws attention to the often overlooked humorous and joyful dimensions of the artist’s work, opening new perspectives on her oeuvre. ‘Balkan Erotic Epic’—a body of work that gives the exhibition its title—was conceived in 2005 and brought back to life in 2025 in various forms. This year, in addition to the exhibition at Gropius Bau, a four-hour stage version will be presented at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele in October.
‘Tito’s Funeral’ from the series ‘Balkan Erotic Epic,’ performance documentation, Factory International, 2025, Manchester, UK // © Marina Abramović, courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2026, photo by Marco Anelli
He Art Museum
Leelee Chan: ‘Hybrid Palimpsests’
Exhibition: Mar. 20-June 30, 2026
hem.org
China, 新城 Shunde District, Beijiaozhen, 怡兴路6号CN 广东省 佛山市 邮政编码: 528000, click here for map
Leelee Chan’s first museum solo exhibition, ‘Hybrid Palimpsests,’ brings together works from the past seven years alongside newly commissioned outdoor sculptures. Known for assembling materials across temporal and cultural registers, Chan combines urban debris, industrial remnants and ancient elements into sculptural constellations that traverse geological and historical time. From stone encasing stainless steel to plastic embedded with obsidian, the works reflect on extraction, circulation and the afterlives of matter. Rather than separating past and present, the exhibition positions them within a shared field, inviting viewers to consider how materials carry memory and reshape our understanding of time.
Leelee Chan: ‘Hybrid Palimpsests,’ Installation View, He Art Museum // Photos by Chen Yuxin, ©️He Art Museum
Palais de Tokyo
Jesse Darling: ‘The Ambassadors’
Exhibition: Apr. 3-Sept.13, 2026
palaisdetokyo.com
13 Av. du Président Wilson, 75116 Paris, France, click here for map
Jesse Darling’s sculptures use industrial and discarded materials, which he transforms into fragile, hybrid forms that reveal the hidden narratives of everyday objects. The 2023 Turner Prize Winer’s site-specific installation ‘The Ambassadors’ for the the grande verrière of the Palais de Tokyo creates a haunting landscape of decaying posters and powerless symbols, suggesting erosion and instability. Referencing Hans Holbein the Younger and vanitas traditions, the work reflects on mortality, the futility of power and the collapse of dominant narratives. Through useful disorder, Darling resists productivist norms, while his melancholic approach highlights the vulnerability of material systems, offering poetic disarmament and prompting reconsideration of values in a damaged, unstable world.
Jesse Darling: Turner Prize, installation view, Towner Eastbourne, UK (Eastbourne), 2023-2024 // Photo by Tom Carter
New Museum
Group Show: ‘New Humans: Memories of the Future’
Exhibition: Mar. 21, 2026-Ongoing
newmuseum.org
235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002, USA, click here for map
Inaugurating the New Museum’s expanded building, ‘New Humans: Memories of the Future’ examines what it means to be human in the face of accelerating technological and social change. Spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, the exhibition brings together more than 150 international artists, writers, scientists, architects and filmmakers, including Sophia Al-Maria, Meriem Bennani, Pierre Huyghe, Wangechi Mutu, Anicka Yi and Hito Steyerl. Juxtaposing contemporary works with historical pieces by figures such as Salvador Dalí, Francis Bacon and El Lissitzky, the show traces evolving visions of humanity—from cyborgs and robots to speculative life forms—while highlighting the role of art as a collective reflection on the possible futures of our species.
‘New Humans: Memories of the Future,’ 2026, installation view, New Museum, New York // Courtesy of New Museum, photo by Dario Lasagni
Red Brick Art Museum
Rao Fu: ‘Aurora’
Exhibition: Mar. 21-June 21, 2026
redbrickartmuseum.org
Chaoyang, China, 100103, click here for map
Red Brick Art Museum presents ‘Aurora,’ Rao Fu‘s most comprehensive solo exhibition in China to date. Curated by Yan Shijie, the show surveys the artist’s 25-year practice developed in Dresden, Germany, featuring over 50 works, including his monumental ‘Decalogy’ series, oil paintings and works on paper. Integrating painting with architectural space, Rao Fu invites viewers to investigate human existence, civilizational migration and the dwelling of the soul, offering a profound reflection on personal and collective histories through immersive, large-scale compositions.
Rao Fu: ‘Abyss II,’ oil on canvas, 220 × 420 cm (Triptych), 2021–2022 // © Rao Fu, courtesy of Perrotin
