Art exhibitions to look out for in early 2026
From moving image installations to Black music history, these upcoming events highlight the diversity of cultural and artistic practices across the UK
The start of 2026 marks the opening of significant exhibitions engaging with the histories and traditions of the south-west Asia and north African region, as well as the cultural practices and artistry of diaspora communities.
From large-scale multimedia installations to works on paper that draw on long lineages of image-making, artists from Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan, Bangladesh and elsewhere lead solo and group shows at galleries and major institutions across the UK.
Arash Nassiri, Chisenhale Gallery
In A Bug’s Life, a moving image installation by Tehran-born, Berlin-based artist Arash Nassiri, viewers are taken through a Beverly Hills mansion evoking the ostentatious, neoclassical style favoured by Los Angeles’ Iranian diaspora in the 1980s-90s.
Shot from the viewpoint of an insect puppet voiced by Nassiri’s mother, the film continues a body of work interrogating architecture, space, memory and migration, as well as the fading aesthetics of a lost urban life. The film will be shown as part of his first institutional solo exhibition at London’s Chisenhale Gallery.
A Bug’s Life is an artistic return to LA for Nassiri, who featured the city in previous films Tehran-Geles (2014) and City of Tales (2018). A model for pre-revolutionary Tehran’s urban development, the city embodies what could have been, as Nassiri explained in a recent interview with Mousse. “There is still the ghost of this project… what the city and its inhabitants didn’t become,” he said.
Arash Nassiri is showing at Chisenhale Gallery, London, from 18 January to 22 March 2026.
Dala Nasser: Cemetery of Martyrs and Shahana Rajani: Lines That World a River, Nottingham Contemporary
Nottingham Contemporary’s spring 2026 programme showcases two artists in parallel exhibitions, whose works are inflected with themes of collective mourning, practice and ritual. Dala Nasser’s Cemetery of Martyrs is the Lebanon-born artist’s first solo show in a major cultural institution in the UK. It features a large-scale sculptural and sonic installation based around a collection of charcoal rubbings taken from the graves of major cultural figures, from the Arab Renaissance period to the present-day. Black fabrics hang from a wooden skeletal structure across two gallery spaces, forming a canopy under which visitors pass through, while a soundscape accompanies the experience.
Nasser’s immersive cemetery marks a new approach for the artist, whose previous installations have often engaged with ancient cultures, archaeological ruins and the figures and histories sacred to the Abrahamic traditions.
Shahana Rajani’s Lines That World a River features contributions from artists Ustad Abdul Aziz, Abdul Sattar and Aziza Ahmad. The works engage with the image-making practices and lineages of drawing and painting within Pakistan’s coastal and fishing communities, rooted in part in the Islamic traditions of drawing talismans for protection and remembrance. River maps and murals of the sea are conceived as a means of connection to a disappearing world, jeopardised by the climate crisis, infrastructure and the legacies of colonialism.
Rajani’s multidisciplinary practice spans writing, film-making and research with a focus on climate change.
Cemetery of Martyrs and Lines That World a River will be at Nottingham Contemporary from 7 February to 10 May 2026.
Artists for Kettle’s Yard
Cambridge gallery Kettle’s Yard will celebrate its 70th anniversary in 2027. In March 2026 it will open an exhibition with more than 75 works spanning photography, ceramics, painting and sculpture by artists including Rana Begum, Lubaina Himid, Issam Kourbaj, Sunil Gupta, and Soheila Sokhanvari.
The works are donated by the artists — many of whom are connected to the gallery through early-career shows, retrospectives and commissions — and will be sold in support of an endowment fund named for Kettle’s Yard’s founders. On show will be Begum’s No 1337 Mesh (2023), a powder-coated galvanised mesh sculpture, part of the Bangladesh-born artist’s series of mesh clusters or “clouds”.
Begum’s work, which draws on the geometric features of Islamic art and architecture, is also on display at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until April.
Artists for Kettle’s Yard is showing at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge from 14 March to 12 April 2026.
The Music is Black: A British Story, V&A East Museum
For its first landmark exhibition, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s soon-to-be open east London outpost presents The Music Is Black: A British Story, charting the ways in which Black British music has shaped the UK and global culture. The exhibition will explore its early 20th-century pioneers to contemporary artists: a 125-year survey of jazz, Brit funk, reggae, two-tone, drum’n’bass, garage, grime and more. Among the items on display will be Joan Armatrading’s childhood guitar, outfits worn by Little Simz and photographs by Jennie Baptiste, Dennis Morris, Eddie Otchere and Sam White.
Drawing on the V&A’s and the BBC’s extensive archive, the exhibition takes an immersive, audiovisual approach through large-scale installations and set design. “Set against a backdrop of British colonialism and evolving social, political, and cultural landscapes, we will celebrate the richness and versatility of Black and Black British music as instruments of protest, affirmation, and creativity, and reveal the untold stories behind some of the world’s most popular music of all time,” Jacqueline Springer, curator Africa & diaspora: performance at the V&A, said.
V&A East Museum’s other displays will include works by Pakistani architect Yasmeen Lari, designer Yinka Ilori, ceramicist Bisila Noha, and architecture collective Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh.
The Music Is Black: A British Story opens at V&A East Museum, Stratford on 18 April 2026.
