Art critics have selected four exceptional exhibitions spanning across France, England, and New York City for this summer's cultural calendar. These shows offer diverse perspectives on contemporary art, political activism, and photographic history, taking viewers on what one critic describes as "an expansive road trip of the mind."
The most politically charged exhibition, NO-PHOTO 2025, runs through October 5, 2025, at Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles, France. This year's festival theme, "Disobedient Images," emphasizes defiance and rule-breaking, yet critic Aruna D'Souza notes that Israel's conflict in Gaza remains practically invisible across the festival's forty-two exhibitions. Only Adam Rouhana's two-minute film "Blood Memories" addresses this pressing global issue among hundreds of works on display.
Two significant interventions brought Palestinian voices to the forefront. Nan Goldin concluded her opening night presentation with a short film and an impassioned speech condemning genocide. More prominently, the activist-artist collective NO-PHOTO created poster diptychs throughout the town. These installations feature black rectangles representing redacted photographs alongside poetic descriptions of the censored images, such as "A baby's hand, their tiny fingernails peeking through grey dust, like pearls."
NO-PHOTO's approach addresses crucial questions about consuming images of violence, building on Susan Sontag's 2004 essay "Regarding the Torture of Others," which examined the troubling aspects of the Abu Ghraib photographs. The collective's work allows Palestinian testimony to be heard while avoiding what critics call the "fetishization of suffering," particularly relevant given Israel's alleged weaponization of photography to manufacture consent for military actions.
At Somerset House in London, Tai Shani's "The Spell or The Dream" runs through September 14, 2025, featuring the Turner Prize-winning British artist's first public art piece in the UK. The installation centers on an enormous, androgynous mixed-media figure with flowing blue hair, lying in a futuristic coffin-like structure in the cobblestoned quadrangle. The figure's chest rises and falls through animatronics, creating a dreamlike sleeping giant effect.
Accompanying this sculpture is The Dream Radio, broadcasting 24/7 from August 8 to September 14 with no repeated content. Over seventy participants, including Anne Boyer, Brian Eno, Cecilia Vicuña, Eileen Myles, Lola Olufemi, Maxine Peake, Yanis Varoufakis, Tanya Tagaq, and The Palestinian Sound Archive, contribute readings, playlists, radio plays, audiobooks, and conversations about dreaming as world-building, radical politics, and survival through grief.
In New York City, the Park Avenue Armory's Wade Thompson Drill Hall hosts "Diane Arbus: Constellation" through August 17, 2025, curated by Matthieu Humery. This exhibition represents the largest display of Arbus's work to date, featuring over 450 images including pieces never before publicly shown. All prints were created by Neil Selkirk, Arbus's former student and the only photographer authorized by her estate to work with her negatives.
Critic Margaret Sundell emphasizes how Arbus's photographs transcend simple categorization through accumulated photographic details that reveal each subject's unique humanity. The salon-style installation throughout the Armory's cavernous space encourages viewers to wander among iconic images: the boy with a toy grenade, naked couples in their living room, drag performers, and the famous identical twins with matching dresses and mismatched stockings.
The final recommendation, "LIFE—a group show" at Artists Space (11 Cortlandt Alley), runs through August 16, 2025, curated by Arnold J. Kemp. This exhibition pays homage to Jeffrey Deitch's 1975 show "Lives: Artists Who Deal With People's Lives," condensing the original title while maintaining its spirit of exploring art that engages directly with human experience.
The show's complexity was demonstrated in a June 5 performance by Gregg Bordowitz, who offered a near-alphabetical exploration of fifteen terms including activism, betrayal, critical theory, mortality, and vulnerability, spending two minutes on each concept. Visual works include Nayland Blake's partially melted red, white, and blue wax candles spelling "LOVE," creating both mournful and hopeful effects.
Poetry serves as a central organizing principle, with a free zine edited by Kemp featuring contributions from Erica Hunt, John Keene, and others. The exhibition also functions as a memorial, particularly honoring the late performance artist Pope.L, whose correspondence with Geoffrey Hendricks is displayed in a vitrine. Both artists, key figures in Fluxus and performance art respectively, passed away in recent years (Hendricks in 2018, Pope.L in 2023), lending the exhibition an elegiac quality that celebrates what endures after life ends.
