The pioneer of total installation, Ilya Kabakov, once observed that the primary protagonist in immersive art is never the physical object resting on the floor or mounted to a gallery wall. Instead, the true center towards which everything addresses itself is the spectator.

Unlike traditional painting or sculpture—which demands a degree of distance—installation art absorbs the viewer into its very architecture. It shifts the artistic gesture from an object to be observed into an environment to be lived.

Across global institutions this season, five extraordinary exhibitions demonstrate the transformative power of spatial storytelling. From luminescent, organic tensile forms to cosmic light mazes, these shows redefine how audiences occupy artistic space.

1. Julio Le Parc: Light. Colour. Action.

Tate Modern, London | Until 3 May 2027

Over seven decades of visionary practice, Argentine kinetic master Julio Le Parc has pursued a singular objective: activating the audience. At Tate Modern, more than 60 works are arranged in a maze-like journey that forces visitors to participate in bringing each optical phenomenon to life.

Le Parc’s breakthrough luminokinetic pieces—originating in his 1959 Light Boxes made of layered acrylic sheets—find their ultimate expression in his celebrated Continual Light Mobiles (first debuted in 1960).

By aiming targeted spotlights at suspended reflective steel and transparent acrylic shapes, Le Parc creates shimmering, kaleidoscopic visuals that shatter static gallery walls into fluid, pulsating fields of movement.

2. Aleksandra Kasuba: Shelters for the Senses

Tate St. Ives | Until 4 October

In 1944, fleeing the trauma of successive Nazi and Soviet occupations in Lithuania, visionary artist Aleksandra Kasuba began a journey that ultimately brought her to the United States. Driven by a lifelong urge to reconnect human living spaces with the organic curves of the natural environment, Kasuba famously declared to The New Yorker in 1971 that she wanted to “kill the square.”

Her cavernous, light-diffusing tensile fabric environments discard four-walled constraints, surrounding visitors in seamless, cocoon-like structures designed for sensory healing.

3. The Sun and The Moon: Art Inspired by the Celestial

Saatchi Gallery, London | Until 8 September

Humanity’s ancient relationship with celestial bodies receives an ambitious modern treatment at Saatchi Gallery. Occupying nine distinct spaces across two floors, the exhibition is structured as an immersive 24-hour cycle, guiding visitors through the shifting light of dawn, noon, twilight, and midnight.

Featuring works by contemporary collectives such as teamLab, the show builds on centuries of artistic mythology—from ancient Egyptian depictions of the sun god Ra to medieval stained-glass light studies—inviting audiences to physically walk through a full day of cosmic reflection.

4. Cecilia Fiona: Spiritual Gathering, Time Breathing

Towner Eastbourne | Until 1 November

Danish artist Cecilia Fiona brings her first UK institutional solo show to Towner Eastbourne, presenting a universe where the human body, organic matter, and quantum mechanics fuse together.

Working with natural pigments, dynamic canvases, and an immersive soundscape created alongside musician Lucie Cure, Fiona paints world-forms where limbs melt into twisting tree roots and cellular tendrils. The result is a dreamlike space that treats the universe as a singular, breathing organism.

5. Es Devlin: Other Worlds

The Design Museum, London | Opens 2 October

Spanning thirty years of groundbreaking practice across sculpture, opera, arena tours, and architectural installations, Es Devlin receives her first major retrospective at London’s Design Museum.

Devlin’s work blurs the boundary between stage design and civic sculpture. As Design Museum Director Tim Marlow notes, her practice embodies “enlightened design thinking.” By combining light projection, kinetic sculpture, spoken word, and spatial geometry, Devlin creates environments where the audience shifts from passive spectators to active participants within a shared narrative world.

The Immersive Shift

These five exhibitions highlight a profound evolution in global exhibition culture. By stepping inside these environments, audiences are no longer simply looking at art—they are completing it, carrying forward Kabakov’s vision of a space where the artwork only fully exists through the presence of the human viewer.