The Artists Who Defined a Decade (2014–2024)
The story of contemporary art in the last decade is inextricably linked to the story of the biennale. With over 200 recurring exhibitions now spanning the globe, the biennale has become the dominant structural logic of the contemporary art world—a decentralized network for the production, presentation, and circulation of ideas.
This comprehensive guide presents the 100 artists whose work has most powerfully defined the international biennale circuit from 2014 to 2024. Selected through rigorous analysis of the world's most significant biennales, these are the artists who have provided the essential vocabulary for our turbulent times.
Practice
Region
b. 1977, Iran
Lives and works in Montreal and Berlin
Installation, Sculpture
Akhavan creates subtle, ephemeral installations that explore the politics of space, from the home to the nation. His site-specific works often use living materials like plants to reflect on hospitality, hostility, and the fragility of ecosystems.
b. 1971, Algeria
Lives and works in London
Conceptual Art, Sculpture
A conceptual artist creating provocative works that confront violence, migration, and suffering. He uses charged materials like barbed wire and charcoal to create visceral experiences that translate personal history into universal statements.
b. 1985, Jordan
Lives and works in Dubai
Audio Investigation, Video Installation
A "private ear" whose audio-visual investigations explore the politics of sound. His forensic analyses of "earwitness" testimony for human rights organizations expose how sound can become evidence of violence and injustice.
b. 1957, China
Lives and works in Portugal, UK, Germany, and China
Conceptual Art, Architecture, Activism
A dissident artist and activist whose monumental practice confronts authoritarianism, state corruption, and the global refugee crisis. His work masterfully blends traditional Chinese materials with provocative, conceptual gestures.
b. 1957, Ghana
Lives and works in London
Film, Multi-Screen Installation
A pioneering filmmaker whose immersive, multi-screen video installations create symphonic meditations on memory, migration, and the climate crisis. His archival approach links the colonial past with our planetary present.
b. 1959, Belgium
Lives and works in Mexico City
Performance, Video, Painting
A conceptual artist whose work consists of poetic and often absurd "actions" that intervene in politically charged landscapes. His documented gestures become fables about labor, futility, and resistance.
b. 1944, Ghana
Lives and works in Nigeria
Sculpture, Installation
A celebrated sculptor who transforms thousands of discarded aluminum bottle caps into vast, shimmering tapestries. These works evoke traditional textiles while speaking to histories of trade, consumption, and colonialism.
b. 1983, Nigeria
Lives and works in Los Angeles
Painting, Collage
A painter who creates large-scale, layered works on paper depicting scenes of domestic intimacy. Her unique technique of layering paint with collage and photo transfers explores the "third space" of the immigrant experience.
b. 1984, Kenya
Lives and works in London and Nairobi
Painting
A painter who creates lush, dreamlike narrative paintings on Lubugo bark cloth. His work explores the social and political landscapes of East Africa, drawing on sources from current events to mythology and art history.
b. 1986, Thailand
Lives and works in New York and Bangkok
Video, Installation, Performance
A multidisciplinary artist whose sprawling video installations, performances, and "denim paintings" create a vibrant, chaotic cosmology weaving together Thai pop culture, animism, political history, and personal narrative.
b. 1970, France
Lives and works in Berlin and Paris
Installation, Sculpture, Video
A French-Algerian artist whose research-driven practice explores the concept of "repair." His work investigates the wounds of colonialism and contrasts Western ideals of perfection with non-Western traditions of visible mending.
b. 1980, Lebanon
Lives and works in Paris
Sound Art, Installation
An artist and composer who creates complex, collaborative sound installations. He designs new musical instruments that explore how sound is perceived, felt, and socialized, often working with deaf communities.
b. 1981, Dominican Republic
Lives and works in New York
Painting, Installation
A painter and installation artist whose vibrant works dismantle historical narratives. She creates powerful new mythologies centered on female figures of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, often painting over colonial maps and documents.
b. 1978, DRC
Lives and works in Brussels and Lubumbashi
Photography, Video
A visual artist who conducts an archaeological investigation into the memory of the Democratic Republic of Congo. His photomontages superimpose archival images onto contemporary landscapes to expose colonial legacies.
b. 1971, France
Lives and works in Tangier and New York
Photography, Film, Installation
A multidisciplinary artist exploring the social and political realities of Morocco. Her work focuses on themes of migration, urban development, and the subtle forms of resistance found in everyday life.
b. 1985, USA
Lives and works in New York
Sculpture, Sound Installation
An artist whose work in sculpture and sound transforms found materials—clothing, athletic gear, raw cotton—into powerful objects that resonate with personal and collective histories of the American South and the Black experience.
b. 1960, Canada
Lives and works in Toronto
Performance, Installation
An Anishinaabe artist whose powerful, often confrontational work addresses the violent histories of colonialism in Canada. Her performances use her body as a site to articulate trauma, resistance, and the ongoing struggles of Indigenous peoples.
b. 1985, Algeria
Lives and works in Paris
Video, Sculpture, Installation
Creates complex installations examining power structures, digital culture, and global politics through game-like environments mixing video, sculpture, and participatory elements.
b. 1981, South Africa
Lives and works in Johannesburg
Installation, Video
An artist whose immersive installations combine video, sound, and organic materials like soil and clay. Her work creates ritualistic spaces that explore land, memory, sovereignty, and the sacred from a Black feminist perspective.
b. 1978, Algeria
Lives and works in Paris
Photography, Video, Sculpture
An artist who explores the realities of marginalized communities in the peripheries of Paris. His celebrated series 'Périphérique' staged scenes composed to echo classical paintings, questioning media representation and power dynamics.
b. 1962, UK
Lives and works in London
Drawing, Performance, Installation
A key figure in the British Black Arts Movement whose socially engaged practice centers on improvisation and collaboration. Her work explores the politics of the voice, participation, and the performance of identity.
b. 1961, USA
Lives and works in Los Angeles
Painting, Installation
An artist known for monumental, abstract canvases that function as material maps of urban life. Through a process of layering and excavating found paper, his "social abstractions" reveal the forces that shape cities.
b. 1968, Cuba
Lives and works in Cambridge, USA
Performance, Installation, Activism
A Cuban artist and activist whose work, termed 'Arte Útil' (Useful Art), focuses on power, control, and political agency. Her projects often blur the line between art and life, creating platforms for social change.
b. 1984, Croatia
Lives and works in New York
Sculpture, Installation
An artist whose sculptures and installations reanimate cinematic histories and architectural environments. Using props, dust, and special effects, her atmospheric works explore the porous boundary between fiction and reality.
b. 1978, China
Lives and works in Beijing
Video, Virtual Reality
Documents China's rapid transformation through surreal videos exploring urbanization, digital culture, and generational change, often using avatars and virtual worlds.
b. 1985, Georgia
Lives and works in Tbilisi and Berlin
Film, Installation
An artist whose films and installations create poetic, often melancholic allegories about memory, trauma, and the human condition. His simple yet profound gestures explore complex psychological states in post-Soviet contexts.
b. 1984, USA
Lives and works in New York
Live Simulations, AI Art
A pioneering artist who uses video game engines and AI to create "live simulations." These virtual ecosystems, populated by evolving AI characters, are a profound exploration of consciousness, chaos, and control.
b. 1969, Vietnam
Lives and works in Ho Chi Minh City
Cartography, Drawing, Installation
A research-based artist who uses meticulously crafted maps and drawings to document histories of migration, conflict, and urban transformation. Her "counter-geographies" trace the human stories of displacement and survival.
b. 1979, UK
Lives and works in Berlin and Colombo
Video, Real Estate, AI
Creates projects examining art, technology, and politics post-Sri Lankan civil war, including "New Eelam"—a proposition for a transnational housing subscription replacing nation-states.
b. 1980, USA
Lives and works in Philadelphia
Video, Installation
A video and installation artist who creates hyper-saturated, surreal worlds. His work remixes the visual language of pop culture, advertising, and cartoons into an unsettling exploration of consumerism, identity, and desire.
b. 1989, Philippines
Lives and works in Rizal
Counter-Cartography, Textile
An artist who uses counter-cartography, sculpture, and installation to critique colonial legacies of power and land ownership in the Philippines. His work often involves collaboration with Indigenous and peasant communities.
b. 1966, UK
Lives and works in London
Social Practice, Film
A conceptual artist and cultural historian who orchestrates social events, such as his famed re-enactment 'The Battle of Orgreave.' His work explores the history and politics of the UK from the perspective of its people.
b. 1982, UK
Lives and works in Berlin
Video, CGI, Writing
Creates unsettling HD videos featuring CGI avatars exploring death, loss, and technology's failure to capture authentic emotion, accompanied by melancholic soundtracks.
b. 1980, Cyprus
Lives and works in Berlin
Installation, Film, Collage
An artist who creates meticulously composed installations of found images, objects, and sculptures. Her work constructs enigmatic, non-linear narratives that explore the nature of time, memory, and fragmented history.
b. 1974, Morocco
Lives and works in Switzerland
Installation, Sculpture
A conceptual artist whose installations use simple materials and powerful gestures to create poetic and politically resonant works. Her art often evokes a sense of aftermath, exploring themes of memory, culture, and history's traces.
b. 1937, USA
Lives and works in New York
Sculpture
A pioneering African-American sculptor known for his abstract works in welded steel. His ongoing 'Lynch Fragments' series, begun in the 1960s, transforms industrial materials into powerful statements on race, violence, and history.
b. 1965, France
Lives and works in New York
Painting, Sculpture
A painter and sculptor whose work combines art historical references, cartoonish figuration, and sharp social commentary. Her vibrant paintings and sculptures offer a tender and critical vision of contemporary life and queer community.
f. 2010, UK
Based at Goldsmiths, London
Research Agency, Investigation
A multidisciplinary research agency that uses architectural and media technologies to investigate human rights violations and state violence. Their work, presented in legal forums and art exhibitions, forges a new practice of artist-as-investigator.
b. 1956, Germany
Lives and works in Wuppertal and Düsseldorf
Sculpture
A German sculptor known for her uncanny, meticulously crafted sculptures of everyday objects and figures. By casting familiar forms in multiples and painting them in vivid, monochrome colors, she transforms them into strange, psychologically charged apparitions.
b. 1944, USA
Lives and works in Los Angeles
Conceptual Art, Drawing
A pivotal figure in Conceptual art, Gaines creates rigorous, system-based works that explore the relationship between objective systems and subjective experience. His grid-based drawings often use political and historical source material.
b. 1980, France
Lives and works in Berlin and New York
Film, Sculpture, Land Art
Creates works exploring entropy, ruins, and landscape transformation, documenting the collision between nature and urban development in post-industrial environments.
b. 1973, USA
Lives and works in Chicago
Social Practice, Installation
A social practice artist whose work encompasses sculpture, performance, and urban renewal. He transforms abandoned buildings and discarded materials into vibrant cultural institutions and powerful archives of Black history, primarily on Chicago's South Side.
b. 1948, Germany
Lives and works in Berlin
Sculpture, Installation
A relentlessly inventive artist whose work in sculpture and installation captures the chaotic, fragmented beauty of contemporary life. Using a punk, DIY aesthetic, her anarchic assemblages reflect on modern architecture and consumer culture.
1933-2022, USA
Lived and worked in Washington, DC
Painting, Sculpture
A pioneering abstract painter of the Washington Color School, best known for his revolutionary "Drape" paintings. By freeing the canvas from the stretcher, he created immersive, architectural environments of pure color.
b. 1953, USA
Lives and works in New York and Berlin
Photography, Activism
A legendary photographer whose raw, diary-like images chronicle her life and chosen family in queer counter-cultural communities. Her practice has fused with fierce activism through her organization P.A.I.N., targeting the Sackler family and the opioid crisis.
b. 1938, Colombia
Lives and works in Bogotá
Painting, Printmaking
Pioneering Colombian artist using pop aesthetics to address political violence, creating furniture-paintings and prints that transform media images of tragedy into powerful memorials.
b. 1936, Germany
Lives and works in New York
Institutional Critique
A pioneering conceptual artist who rigorously exposes the hidden systems of power—political, economic, and corporate—that underpin the art world. His work functions as sociological analysis, challenging the museum's neutrality.
b. 1986, Kosovo
Lives and works between Germany, Kosovo, and Italy
Installation, Sculpture
An artist whose installations explore memory, freedom, and identity, drawing on his experiences of the Kosovo War. He uses humble materials like soil and twigs to create fantastical sculptures that are metaphors for survival and home.
b. 1978, UK
Lives and works in London
Installation, Sculpture
Creates surreal, pop-inflected installations exploring desire, fetish, and cultural references through unexpected materials and imagery, often featuring legs, tiles, and kimonos.
b. 1952, Lebanon
Lives and works in London and Berlin
Installation, Video, Performance
A Palestinian-British artist whose work uses the language of minimalism and surrealism to explore displacement and exile. She transforms familiar domestic objects into instruments of danger, confinement, and psychological threat.
b. 1934, USA
Lives and works in Paris
Fiber Art, Installation
A pioneering artist who has pushed the boundaries of fiber art for over six decades. She creates everything from small, intimate weavings to monumental, architectural installations of pure, sensuous color and texture.
b. 1975, Iraq
Lives and works in Berlin
Video, Performance, Installation
A Kurdish-Iraqi artist who draws on his personal history as a refugee to create powerful stories of survival. His work highlights alternative modes of knowledge and the resourcefulness of those living on the margins.
b. 1961, Belgium
Lives and works in Stockholm and Biriwa, Ghana
Installation, Social Experiments
An artist with a background in science whose work takes the form of large-scale interactive installations, like his famous slides. He transforms the museum into a laboratory for exploring human perception, emotion, and behavior.
b. 1986, France
Lives and works in London
Sculpture, Sound Installation
An artist whose sculptures and sound installations resurrect extinct life forms and speculate on future evolutions. Her "biological showbiz" blends scientific research with mythological fiction to explore the mysteries of life and consciousness.
b. 1978, Germany
Lives and works in Berlin and New York
Performance, Installation
An artist whose durational performances and installations create stark, stylish portraits of contemporary alienation. Featuring a recurring troupe of performers, her work is a tightly choreographed yet unsettling reflection of our time.
b. 1956, Chile
Lives and works in New York
Installation, Photography, Film
An artist, architect, and filmmaker whose installations explore the politics of representation and the ethics of bearing witness. His work critiques how media consumes tragedy, often by withholding graphic images to create space for reflection.
b. 1960, USA
Lives and works in Los Angeles
Film, Video Installation
A filmmaker and artist who creates virtuosic video collages that articulate the complex spectrum of Black experience. Using found footage, he aims to create a "black cinema" with the power and beauty of black music.
b. 1973, USA
Lives and works in New York
Conceptual Art, Writing
Creates intimate relationships with systems of power—police, intelligence agencies, corporations—using their own protocols to reveal hidden operations and ethics of surveillance.
b. 1936, USA
Lives and works in New York
Performance, Video, Installation
A foundational figure in performance and video art, Jonas creates multi-layered works that combine performance, drawing, video, and props. Her dreamlike, ritualistic performances explore mythology and the nature of female identity.
b. 1960, UK
Lives and works in London and Santa Cruz, USA
Film, Multi-Screen Installation
A filmmaker and installation artist whose visually sumptuous, multi-screen films explore the complexities of race, sexuality, and cultural identity, often through poetic portraits of key historical figures from the Black diaspora.
b. 1976, Iceland
Lives and works in Reykjavik
Performance, Video, Music
Creates durational performances and videos exploring romantic clichés, melancholy, and repetition, often collaborating with musicians in marathon performances of emotional endurance.
b. 1967, USA
Lives and works in New York
Sculpture, Installation
Creates monumental sculptures celebrating Black femininity and vernacular architecture, drawing on African diasporic forms and traditions of care, beauty, and community.
b. 1972, China
Lives and works in Beijing
Sculpture, Installation, Painting
Creates monumental installations from urban detritus exploring China's urban explosion, transforming construction materials and cityscapes into dystopian architectural visions.
b. 1972, South Africa
Lives and works in Johannesburg
Photography, Activism
Visual activist documenting and celebrating Black LGBTQIA+ communities in South Africa, creating powerful portraits that assert queer presence and resist erasure.
b. 1986, Colombia
Lives and works in various locations
Painting, Installation, Social Practice
Creates raw, energetic paintings and community projects exploring labor, migration, and globalization, including worldwide "Frequencies" project with schoolchildren.
b. 1974, Nigeria
Lives and works in Antwerp
Installation, Performance, Drawing
Explores mineral extraction, land, and resources through tapestries, installations, and performances, tracing how materials move across borders and bodies.
b. 1974, USA
Lives and works in Berlin
Photography, Research
Artist-geographer documenting classified military sites, underwater internet cables, and surveillance systems, making visible the hidden infrastructures of power.
b. 1986, USA
Lives and works in Newark
Video, Installation
Creates immersive video installations exploring Blackness in digital space, using avatars, blue screens, and digital manipulation to examine racial representation online.
b. 1978, Argentina
Lives and works in London and Mexico City
Installation, Performance
Creates poetic works exploring communication, censorship, and civic participation, often referencing Argentina's dictatorship through minimal gestures and participatory actions.
b. 1978, France
Lives and works in Brussels
Video, Installation
Creates immersive installations mixing video, objects, and text exploring language, translation, and misunderstanding through surreal narratives and sensory experiences.
b. 1967, Lebanon
Lives and works in New York
Archive, Photography, Performance
Creates fictional archives through "The Atlas Group" exploring Lebanese civil war's psychological aftermath, blurring boundaries between fact and fiction in historical narrative.
b. 1976, Argentina
Lives and works in New York
Video, Installation
Creates surreal video installations exploring labor, production, and female bodies in globalized capitalism through absurdist factory scenarios and magical realism.
b. 1973, Argentina
Lives and works in Berlin
Installation, Architecture
Creates floating sculptures and web-like installations inspired by spider webs, clouds, and bubbles, imagining alternative ways of living and sensing in the Anthropocene.
b. 1986, USA
Lives and works in New York
Video, Performance, 3D Animation
Creates kaleidoscopic virtual worlds combining personal history, queer desire, and Afrofuturism, often incorporating his mother's drawings into fantastical digital landscapes.
b. 1969, Netherlands
Lives and works in Los Angeles
Textile Sculpture, Performance
Creates exuberant fabric sculptures and processions celebrating female sexuality and protest culture, using textiles to create powerful statements about body politics.
b. 1976, UK
Lives and works in Berlin
Constructed Situations
Creates "constructed situations" using only human presence—no objects, documentation, or written instructions. His living artworks challenge art market conventions and material culture.
b. 1961, India
Lives and works in New Delhi
Photography, Book Art
Reimagines photography through innovative book forms and mobile "museums," creating portable exhibitions that challenge conventional display while documenting Indian archives and interiors.
b. 1987, USA
Lives and works in New York
Painting
Creates large-scale paintings using 3D modeling software and airbrush techniques, depicting art world scenes in stark black and white, merging digital and analog processes.
b. 1966, Germany
Lives and works in Berlin
Video Essay, Installation
An influential artist and theorist whose video essays offer a critical and humorous guide to the paradoxes of the digital age. Her work investigates the politics of the image, surveillance, and the flow of data.
b. 1983, Finland
Lives and works in Berlin
Bio Art, Sound, Video
Works with biological materials and AI to create interspecies art, collaborating with bacteria, slime molds, and machine learning to explore non-human intelligence.
b. 1988, USA
Lives and works in Los Angeles
Video, Installation, Performance
Explores Black identity in digital age through videos, installations, and performances examining representation, gesture, and vernacular culture in contemporary media.
b. 1987, Vietnam
Lives and works in Berlin
Installation, Sound, Sculpture
Creates installations examining bureaucratic violence and refugee experience through administrative aesthetics, using office furniture, sound, and light to evoke institutional control.
b. 1982, USA
Lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles
Film, Performance, Installation
Creates films and performances exploring queer and trans communities, collaboration, and solidarity. Works blur boundaries between documentary and fiction, performance and participation.
b. 1980, Argentina
Lives and works nomadically
Installation, Sculpture
Creates site-specific installations imagining post-apocalyptic worlds where nature reclaims civilization. Works with clay, found objects, and organic materials in monumental, ephemeral pieces.
b. 1975, Vietnam
Lives and works in Berlin and Mexico City
Installation, Sculpture
Vietnamese-Danish artist creating installations from found objects and personal artifacts exploring themes of migration, cultural identity, colonialism, and the Vietnam War's legacy.
b. 1969, USA
Lives and works in New York
Drawing, Installation, Video
Creates powerful silhouettes and installations exploring race, gender, sexuality, and violence in American history, using antebellum imagery to confront ongoing racial trauma.
b. 1970, Thailand
Lives and works in Chiang Mai
Film, Video Installation
Award-winning filmmaker creating dreamlike films and installations exploring memory, politics, and folklore in Thailand. Blends personal narratives with national histories and mythology.
b. 1971, Singapore
Lives and works in Berlin
Video, Performance
Restages iconic films exploring cultural translation, gender, and identity, often playing all roles himself to examine representation and performativity across cultures.