Four Shows That Will Make You See the World Through a New Lens at LUMA Arles

More than 40 heritage sites in the Roman ruin-lined city of Arles are host to Rencontres d’Arles, one of the world’s oldest photography festivals, whose 55th rendition opened on Monday. Nearby, LUMA Foundation’s creative art campus LUMA Arles likewise seeks to ‘encourage audiences to see the world through new lens’ with a new series of exhibitions (5 July 2025–11 January 2026) by artists renowned for probing the structures of reality and mythology. Here’s what Ocula recommends taking in.

1. Peter Fischli, People Planet Profit

Peter Fischli’s first monographic exhibition in France inquires into the visuals that shape our perception within ‘the infrastructures of a capitalist economy’, building on his work probing experiences of modern life as one part of the artist duo Fischli and Weiss.

Taken from his mobile phone, images on view will highlight the ‘flexible flow’ of labour, data, and information in creative economies while drawing attention to cycles of production today and their relationship to corporate targets and practices required of sustainable societies. 

2. Koo Jeong A, LAND OF OUSSS [KANGSE]

Korean artist Koo Jeong A presents a personal cosmology of new and recent works exploring the connections bridging telluric and cosmic matters, as part of her largest exhibition in France. OUSSS, from the title, notably refers to a liminal space, bringing to the fore ‘the invisible forces that shape our reality’. 

Works on view include an olfactory installation featuring a levitating figure, phosphorescent paintings, ink drawings, and wooden sculptures—all of which reflect the artist’s approach of grounding personal associations, imaginaries, and cosmological inquiries within ephemeral materials like light, temperature, scent, and sound. 

3. Wael Shawky, I am Hymns of the New Temples

Built after the ruins of Pompeii, an ancient civilizational crossroad, Egyptian artist Wael Shawky’s new installation transforms the Grand Hall into an experiential space overseen by the volcano Mount Vesuvius, where a central film recounts the tale of earth goddess Gaia. 

In Shawky’s version, Gaia encounters masked characters, divine creatures, and illustrious deities as she walks through Pompeii, eventually landing at a Roman temple, hinting at myths’ cross-pollination across cultures and time. Glass and bronze sculptures further evoke the fragile act of creation—an active meaning-making that is extended by drawings and paintings on view. 

4. Ho Tzu Nyen, Phantom Day and Stranger Tales

Before directing next year’s Gwangju Biennale, Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen will bring his reimaginings of Southeast Asian state and personal histories to the Mediterranean coast with five video installations made in the past decade.

On view are works from his 2023 survey at Singapore Art Museum and a new commission experimenting with algorithmic filmmaking. Phantoms of Endless Day is described as ‘a hallucinatory, tropical gothic experience’ that combines alternative timelines that blend memory, myth, and fantasy to ‘[challenge] conventional understandings of time, perception, and storytelling’.

Inside the Frank Gehry-designed steel tower, you can also enter a draw to spend a night in Dream Hotel Room #1—a swaying bed that ‘simulates the sensation of flight’ by artist Carsten Höller and MIT researcher Adam Haar, which is designed to influence your dreams with an accompanying soundtrack and flying overhead ‘mushroom’ sculpture. —[O]