Con­tribut­ing Writer Soraya Durand

“Chaos is the score upon which real­i­ty is writ­ten.” Hen­ry Miller’s asser­tion feels new­ly prophet­ic in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. Today, chaos is not an inter­rup­tion but the dom­i­nant tex­ture of expe­ri­ence. Polit­i­cal tur­bu­lence, eco­log­i­cal rup­ture, tech­no­log­i­cal accel­er­a­tion, and cul­tur­al atom­i­sa­tion have cre­at­ed an envi­ron­ment in which events no longer occur in sequence but all at once. We inhab­it simul­tane­ity as a con­di­tion, inun­dat­ed by images, alerts, and com­pet­ing nar­ra­tives that col­lapse our abil­i­ty to dis­tin­guish sig­nal from noise. In this con­text of sat­u­ra­tion and frag­men­ta­tion, the ques­tion of what makes a great art exhi­bi­tion can no longer be answered in pure­ly aes­thet­ic terms. It has become, inevitably, a polit­i­cal question. 

Exhi­bi­tions are no longer pas­sive ves­sels for art; they have become nav­i­ga­tion­al archi­tec­tures — mech­a­nisms for ori­ent­ing the view­er with­in the excess­es of con­tem­po­rary life. A com­pelling exhi­bi­tion stages encoun­ters rather than dis­plays, chore­o­graphs atten­tion rather than assum­ing it. It organ­is­es not only what is seen but how it is seen, and what is allowed to res­onate in the small pock­ets of still­ness it cre­ates. If the world out­side is a con­tin­u­ous, unfil­tered tor­rent, the gallery becomes a tem­po­rary appa­ra­tus for mean­ing-mak­ing: a space in which silence is inten­tion­al, rhythm is cura­to­r­i­al, and the sequenc­ing of works func­tions like a counter-algo­rithm to the speed and dis­per­sion of dig­i­tal culture. 

In this sense, exhi­bi­tions oper­ate as a form of resis­tance. They refuse the flat­ten­ing effect of per­pet­u­al cri­sis, the algo­rith­mic ten­den­cy to declare all infor­ma­tion equal­ly urgent. Instead, they assert that mean­ing emerges through choice, hier­ar­chy, and atten­tion — through the del­i­cate con­struc­tion of con­text. A great exhi­bi­tion doesn’t claim to resolve dis­or­der; it guides us through it. 

It is with­in this frame­work that my inquiry, “What Makes a Great Art Exhi­bi­tion: On the Pol­i­tics of Chaos,” takes shape. The aim is not to define great­ness through spec­ta­cle or scale, but to under­stand how exhi­bi­tions respond to — and some­times reshape — the con­di­tions of over­load that define our moment. How do they pro­vide clar­i­ty with­out sim­pli­fy­ing? How do they cre­ate inten­si­ty with­out noise? How do they allow us to look dif­fer­ent­ly, and there­fore to think differently? 

To explore these ques­tions, I turn to Paris and Lon­don, two cities that have long served as cul­tur­al lab­o­ra­to­ries. Their insti­tu­tion­al ecosys­tems are dense, rest­less, intel­lec­tu­al­ly charged, and deeply attuned to the shift­ing pol­i­tics of art in a glob­alised, desta­bilised world. The exhi­bi­tions they stage in 2026 offer a cross-sec­tion of strate­gies: some turn to colour as a form of rebel­lion, some to mem­o­ry as a method of repa­ra­tion, some to sound or tech­nol­o­gy as new ter­rains for engag­ing with the now. 

What fol­lows is a selec­tion of Paris and Lon­don exhi­bi­tions in 2026 that I have select­ed and curat­ed that exem­pli­fy these dynam­ics: exhi­bi­tions that do not mere­ly sur­vive chaos but think through it, and invite us to do the same.

PARIS

Tyler Mitchell: Wish This Was Real

MEP, Paris 

15 Octo­ber 2025 to 25 Jan­u­ary 2026.

The first solo exhi­bi­tion in France of Tyler Mitchell, a key fig­ure of the new gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can pho­tog­ra­phers. The show draws on ten years of his work:photography, video, even sculp­tur­al prints. Through lush pas­toral scenes and re-imag­ined every­day life, the exhi­bi­tion con­jures spaces of pos­si­bil­i­ty, resis­tance, and re-def­i­n­i­tion of iden­ti­ty, coun­ter­ing the flat­ten­ing log­ic of homogenised rep­re­sen­ta­tions. It is a pho­to­graph­ic archi­tec­ture that resists chaos, not by over­whelm­ing but by gen­tle­ness, dig­ni­ty, and re-imag­ined belonging.

Minimal 

Bourse de Commerce 

8 Octo­ber 2025 to 19 Jan­u­ary 2026. 

In a world sat­u­rat­ed by spec­ta­cle, dig­i­tal noise, end­less infor­ma­tion, Minimalism’s ethos of econ­o­my of means, focus on mate­ri­al­i­ty, space, light, and absence becomes a polit­i­cal act. The exhi­bi­tion demands patience, atten­tion, and pres­ence. It offers a counter-algo­rithm to chaos by priv­i­leg­ing sub­trac­tion over accu­mu­la­tion, silence over over­load. The exhibition’s empha­sis on slow look­ing, sub­tle shifts, mate­r­i­al pres­ence, invites the view­er to slow down, to inhab­it time differently.

Matisse: La couleur sans limite

Grand Palais 

24 March – 2 August 2026.

Matisse’s rad­i­cal rela­tion­ship to colour feels uncan­ni­ly suit­ed to our moment. His chro­mat­ic expan­sive­ness wasn’t just aes­thet­ic: it was a philo­soph­i­cal stance, a chal­lenge to con­straint. In 2026, see­ing these works gath­ered togeth­er reads almost as a counter-coda to the grey, cri­sis-tint­ed mood of the present. Here, colour becomes a pol­i­tics of open­ness: space expand­ing rather than con­tract­ing, sen­sa­tion defy­ing the pres­sure to flatten.

Renoir and Love

Musée d’Or­say 

7 March – 19 July 2026.

This major ret­ro­spec­tive gath­ers some of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s mas­ter­pieces, many rarely shown togeth­er, to reflect on love, inti­ma­cy, human rela­tion­ships. In a time sat­u­rat­ed by global

crises and social frag­men­ta­tion, such a show offers a pause for ten­der­ness, con­nec­tion, and emo­tion­al depth.

LONDON

Giacometti x Mona Hatoum

Bar­bi­can Art Gallery
Lon­don 3 Sep­tem­ber 2025 – 11 Jan­u­ary 2026.

Hatoum’s work often explores the archi­tec­ture of vio­lence: polit­i­cal, social or spa­tial and the fragili­ty or pre­car­i­ty of human exis­tence. In this show, by jux­ta­pos­ing Giacometti’s exis­ten­tial sculp­tur­al lega­cy with Hatoum’s con­tem­po­rary, polit­i­cal­ly charged instal­la­tions, the exhibition 

becomes a space for reflec­tion on his­to­ry, mem­o­ry, con­flict, and resilience. It’s not just for­mal: it’s a con­fronta­tion with dis­place­ment, loss, and the con­di­tions of sur­vival in a chaot­ic world.

Nigerian Modernism

Tate Mod­ern, London 

8 Octo­ber 2025 until May 2026.

This major exhi­bi­tion explores the devel­op­ment of mod­ern art in Nige­ria — over 50 artists, more than 250 works span­ning dif­fer­ent gen­er­a­tions and move­ments. The show explic­it­ly re-cen­tres non-West­ern art his­to­ries, chal­leng­ing Euro­cen­tric nar­ra­tives and canon­i­cal canons. In doing so, it recon­fig­ures mem­o­ry, iden­ti­ty, and glob­al art genealo­gies, mak­ing vis­i­ble what was sup­pressed or mar­gin­alised. For a pol­i­tics-of-chaos sen­si­bil­i­ty, this kind of decolo­nial reori­en­ta­tion is both urgent and radical.

Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart

Hay­ward Gallery 

17 Feb­ru­ary – 3 May 2026

The exhi­bi­tion presents works by the con­tem­po­rary Chi­nese artist Yin Xiuzhen, whose prac­tice often reflects on glob­al­i­sa­tion, migra­tion, dis­place­ment, mem­o­ry, and mate­r­i­al fragili­ty (cloth­ing, tex­tiles, found objects, ephemer­al mate­ri­als). In a world shaped by dis­place­ment, cli­mate cri­sis, migra­tion and social rup­ture, Yin’s work – often frag­ile, scarred, poet­ic – offers a form of 

mem­o­ry-work and resis­tance. As exhi­bi­tion archi­tec­ture, this could act as a sub­tle coun­ter­point to spec­ta­cle: invit­ing reflec­tion, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and atten­tive­ness to mate­r­i­al his­to­ries and glob­al entanglements.