The Standard, Pitchapa Wangprasertkul, 2022. Photo credit: Bangkok Art Biennale.
From concept to global recognition
The Spotlight section highlights a curated selection of significant events and projects from the contemporary art world, reflecting collaborations with leading museums, biennales, and cultural institutions and art galleries globally – the additional events are showcased as illustrative examples, revealing the range of opportunities available to artists and curators seeking to present their work on prominent stages.
Through our combination of curatorial expertise, strategic guidance, and an international network of partners, RFA Projects supports artists in developing and realizing their concepts. We aim to connect artistic vision with the right institutional and cultural context, helping works reach influential audiences and resonate meaningfully within the global contemporary art landscape.
GUGGENHEIM ABU DHABI 2026
A New Museum Era is Approaching
In 2026, major museums are set to open across the world, from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi, marking a significant moment in the global cultural landscape. These institutions do not simply add new buildings to cities; they propose new ways of encountering art, space, and one another.
Among them, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi stands as a signal of this shift. Conceived as more than a container for art, the museum unfolds as an environment in motion — a place where architecture breathes with its visitors, where light is choreographed, and where space itself becomes part of the experience. Walls do not merely hold works; they speak, guide, and respond.
Across these new institutions, art is no longer isolated or static. Architecture, technology, and imagination converge to create situations rather than displays. Visitors move through sequences of scale and intimacy, from vast civic gestures to moments of quiet attention. The museum becomes a field of interaction, shaped as much by movement and perception as by objects.
Photos: courtesy of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and the architects. © The National News.
BANGKOK ART BIENNALE 2026
City of Angels
In the City of Angels, Bangkok becomes a luminous stage where light and shadow dance across streets, temples, and the digital ether. ANGELS & MARA invites us to witness the fragile coexistence of the divine and the fallen, the sacred and the profane. Philosophy, psychology, and creativity converge to navigate the tremors of a fractured world. Every gesture, image, and sound reminds us: virtue and corruption, hope and despair, inhabit the same space — and illuminate each other. From sacred temples to bustling streets, from heritage sites to virtual realms, artists from every corner of the globe confront our shared fears, desires, and the eternal question: whose side are we on? Their works invite reflection, hesitation, and wonder — asking us to look beyond appearances and recognize the shadows within the light, and the light within the shadows.
Bangkok Art Biennale 2026 becomes a luminous arena, a city-wide meditation on duality, connection, and the ever-shifting boundary between what we revere and what tempts us. In this luminous dialogue, the city itself transforms: it becomes part of the art, a witness, and a participant in the eternal dance of angels and mara.
Images: (1) Angels & Mara, BAB (2) Haritorn Akarapat (3) Bangkok Art Biennale, photo: Bacc. All images are courtesy of the artists and BAB.
FONDATION CARTIER PARIS
Return to the Centre
With its inauguration at 2, place du Palais-Royal, the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain enters a new phase of visibility and ambition. After four decades shaped by architectural vision and curatorial experimentation, the institution relocates to the very heart of Paris — a symbolic and strategic gesture that reaffirms its role within the city’s cultural core.
Housed in a historic building dating from 1855, the new site has been reimagined by Jean Nouvel into an expansive 8,500 m² environment, including 6,500 m² dedicated to exhibitions. Alongside galleries, the foundation now integrates spaces for education, dialogue, and encounter: a pedagogical room, an auditorium, a bookshop, and a restaurant, positioning the Fondation Cartier as a fully immersive cultural destination.
At the crossroads of heritage, contemporary creation, and metropolitan visibility, the Fondation Cartier’s new home signals a decisive step: art placed not at the margins, but at the centre of the city’s intellectual and cultural life.
Images: (1) Photo: Journal Du Luxe (2) Installation view, Ron Mueck, Mass, 2017. Photo: SORTIRAPARIS.
(3) Installation view, Untitled (Three Dogs), Ron Mueck. All images are courtesy of the artist and Fondation Cartier.
ESPACE GABRIELLE CHANEL
Power Station of Art
At the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, Espace Gabrielle Chanel emerges as a threshold of light — a sanctuary where knowledge gathers in quiet intensity. Fifty thousand books unfold like a silent sea, housed within an architectural vision shaped by Japanese architect Kazunari Sakamoto, where form serves thought and space becomes contemplation.
Located on the museum’s third floor, Mainland China’s first public library dedicated to contemporary art is born as a living archive — not static, but breathing. Here, artistic practices are preserved, decoded, and continuously reactivated, forming an organ of memory attuned to the present.
All images are courtesy of Espace Gabrielle Chanel and Power Station of Art.
STOCKHOLM MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Pablo Picasso, Installation view, Late Picasso. © Succession Picasso/Bildupphovsrätt 2025. Photo: My Matson/Moderna Museet
A call to shape the future of art
Moderna Museet, Stockholm stands as a beacon where international voices converge — a place where modern and contemporary art unfold in a continual dialogue between past and present, light and shadow. At this pivotal moment, the museum opens a call for a visionary curator to help shape its future exhibitions and collection, with a strong focus on international art. It is an invitation to enter an institution defined by intellectual rigor, openness, and global exchange — a space where ideas are tested, challenged, and made visible.
More than a position, this opportunity reflects Moderna Museet’s enduring commitment to artistic excellence and critical vision: a dream role within a dream institution, sustained by a collaborative and forward-looking team.
Applications are open until January 12, 2026. Further details are available via the Moderna Museet.
SHANGHAI BIENNALE – 15th EDITION
Does the Flower Hear the Bee?
The 15th Shanghai Biennale unfolds as a living system—an ecology of relations between sensing, thinking, and being. Inspired by scientific research into how plants perceive vibration, the exhibition asks how intelligence might extend beyond the human, into a shared resonant field connecting all forms of life.
At the Power Station of Art, art becomes a practice of attunement: a way of listening across thresholds—between matter and mind, nature and culture, silence and signal. Works resonate rather than declare, inviting viewers to sense perception as something distributed, porous, and alive.
Opening November 8, 2025 until March 31, 2026, the Biennale proposes a space where awareness is not centered but shared—where the world listens back.
Images: (1) Exhibition poster, courtesy of Shanghai Biennale. (2) Allora & Calzadilla, Graft (Phantom Tree) 2025. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano. Courtesy of the artists and Pinacoteca Agnelli. (3) Haegue Yang, Accomodating the Epic Dispersion – On Non-Cathartic Volume of Dispersion, 2012. Photo: Jens Weber. Courtesy of the artist and Haus der Kunst.
DAKAR BIENNALE OF CONTEMPORARY ART
Dak'Art
From 7 May to 7 June 2026, the Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African Art returns for its 16th edition, reaffirming its position as Africa’s longest-running and most influential international biennale dedicated to contemporary art from the continent and its diaspora. Since its founding, Dak’Art has played a pivotal role in asserting African perspectives within global cultural discourse, fostering meaningful exchanges between local practices and international networks.
The forthcoming edition unfolds in a moment of accelerated transformation. Digital technologies are reshaping artistic production and circulation, while climate urgency continues to redefine mobility, resources, and modes of exchange. Within this shifting landscape, Dak’Art remains a vital platform—one that centres African voices, narratives, and imaginaries, while critically engaging with the forces shaping contemporary life.
Dak’Art's 2026 edition continues the legacy of affirming Dakar as a key site for artistic thought, experimentation, and continental conversation within an increasingly interconnected world.
Images: (1) Laeila Adjovi, Malaika Dotou Sankofa #4, 2017. (2) Emmanuel Tussore, De Cruce, 2022, Installation view, Ancien Palais de Justice, Dakar. (3) Mbaye Diop, De l'arbre à palabre à l'arbre numérique, 2019. All images are courtesy of the artists and Dakar Biennale of Contemporary Art.