As we turn the calendar to 2026, the world of moving image art continues to make waves. From syndromes to straight-edge living, from the vibrancy of youth culture to emotional family dynamics, these are the artists and exhibitions that we are eagerly anticipating in the year to come.

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A blurry image of a shirtless man wearing jeans laying in a disheveled bed.
Nan Goldin, Stendhal Syndrome, 2024 (video still) Jointly owned by the Vancouver Art Gallery and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Image: © Nan Goldin, Courtesy of the artist and Gagosian.

Vancouver Art Gallery is currently hosting Nan Goldin: Stendhal Syndrome, the first major presentation of Goldin's work to be held in the city. Goldin, whose photography is known for its intimacy and ability to evoke intense emotions, has taken her photo slideshows and transformed them into single-channel videos. This format beckons observers to experience these images as more than visual narratives, eliciting visceral encounters that are marked by a hallucinatory quality. Stendhal Syndrome, the eponymous work featured at the gallery, was notably the subject of a failed acquisition by the Art Gallery of Ontario, which caused the curator of contemporary and modern art to resign in protest.

Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca, The Tunnels We Dig
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
January 29 – April 26, 2026

A man and a woman, dressed like pop stars, stand in front of a multi-colored video wall and gaze absently into the distance.
Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca, Estás vendo coisas, 2016, Film still © Courtesy of the artists.

The Tunnels We Dig is the first major solo exhibition to be held in Germany by the artist duo Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca. Three audiovisual pieces created by the duo in different contexts coalesce at the show to tell the stories of cultural movements and collective practices that have developed outside the mainstream of contemporary art. The video installation Future of Yesterday (2026), which explores the rise of Straight Edge (sXe), a “clean” hardcore scene in Germany, is the focal axis of the exhibition.

Cyprien Gaillard
Kunsthaus Bregenz
June 13 – October 4, 2026

Overlapping images of empty bottles and porcelain figures.
Cyprien Gaillard, Retinal Rivalry, Sprüth Magers and Gladstone Gallery, 2024. Film still. Courtesy of the artist.

Kunsthaus Bregenz is organizing a solo exhibition featuring the work of Cyprien Gaillard. The French artist's practice combines sculpture, architecture, video, photography and sound art to address contemporary themes of youth culture, urban development, the perception of nature and approaches to life in modern times. Gaillard is preparing a new film production alongside sculptural interventions that deals with Deterrents – measures which are designed to discourage people from engaging in certain behaviors deemed unacceptable.

Rosa Barba, Drawing Vocabulaires
Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian
May 16 – September 28, 2026

An installation view with a projector and celluloid film reels, with the projected image on a distant wall.
Rosa Barba, Drawing Vocabulaires, 2026. Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian. Courtesy of the artist.

A new site-specific installation conceived by Rosa Barba is the centerpiece of her first large-scale exhibition in Portugal, at the Centro de Arte Modern Gulbenkian in Lisbon. The new work combines 16mm and 35mm celluloid and projectors to activate an immersive, time-based narrative, revealing these mechanical components both as sources of moving images and as sculptural elements in their own right. The title of the exhibition embodies Barba's ongoing quest to transform in real time the narrative of cinema and dissolve the blurred boundary that separates reality from fiction.

Camille Henrot
Copenhagen Contemporary
June 5 – December 31, 2026

A collage featuring cut-out images of a dark-skinned hand wearing a diamond ring with diamond bracelet, a tiger and a whale.
Camille Henrot, In the Veins, 2025. Film still. Courtesy of the artist.

Copenhagen Contemporary is organizing a new series of solo exhibitions featuring the works of major international artists, with a performative survey by Camille Henrot being the first in line. The Scandinavian premiere of her film In the Veins (2025), which has been developed over five years, is a reflection on care, change, and the paradox of raising children in an era of increasing ecological crisis and technological dependence. The exhibition explores an emotional landscape that uncovers the anxieties that emerge from a web of delegated care, environmental uncertainty and technological systems.

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