2026 promises to be quite the year for discovery in the art world, with biennials, triennials, and quadrennials opening everywhere from Diriyah to Pittsburgh, not to mention the grande dame of them all, the 61st Venice Biennale, unveiling in May, almost exactly a year after the death of this edition’s commissioner, Cameroonian curator Koyo Kouoh, at the age of 57. Art Basel and Frieze will welcome new fairs to their growing stables, in Qatar and Abu Dhabi respectively. In Los Angeles and New York, two museum staples—LACMA and the New Museum—will unveil much anticipated expansions. In the midst of this novelty whirlwind, you are sure to be introduced, or reintroduced, to hundreds of artists. We gathered a dozen industry insiders to see which artists they are most excited about (or for!) among them.
Diya Vij, Vice President of Curatorial and Arts Programmes at Powerhouse Arts
“I met Guadalupe Maravilla at the Creative Capital Retreat in 2019 and was instantly enamored by his singular practice that blends autobiography, performance, material exploration, networks of expert artisans and practitioners and neighbors, and a relentless focus on the right to heal our bodies from the ongoing traumas inflicted by the state. Through vibrational sound rituals mainly performed for new immigrants and the cancer community—reverberations originating from handmade gongs meant to recalibrate at the cellular level—his work addresses head-on the entanglement between migration and illness.
As I’ve gotten to know Guadalupe over the past several years, I’ve been most struck by his approach to scale: The way one work morphs into the next, goes mobile, grows bigger alongside an ever-growing community of healers that he assembles and a wide network of mutual aid, clothing and food distribution. Guadalupe builds scale to match need. To be ready to care for those harmed by the cruelty of the worst of our political imagination. It’s hard not to see this as his calling. In this time when we’re watching the deportation apparatus grow exponentially to an unprecedented scale, as our loved ones and neighbors are villainized and disappeared, Guadalupe’s work is a salve. He’s slated for some big and necessary moments in New York and beyond next year, and I will certainly be there.”