Catherine Nichols curates Lyon Biennale 2026 in Lyon; 118 artists participate; three-layer program.

6 artists to watch at the Lyon Biennale 2026 | Art Basel

It is one of the major contemporary art events this fall. Founded in 1991, the Lyon Biennale returns in September for its 18th edition, offering a take on international artmaking across several key venues in the city. This time, the ambitious program has been entrusted to Australian writer and art historian Catherine Nichols who currently works at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. She brings together no fewer than 118 artists from around the world.

The title? To Pass from One Dream to Another is inspired by Lyon’s famous traboules – the discreet passageways that connect the streets of the old city. ‘I was fascinated by the way these passages place people between different spaces and historical layers,’ the curator explains. ‘They make transition physical. You move from darkness into light, from private space toward something almost public, sometimes with no idea where you will emerge.’

The notion of exchange lies at the heart of Nichols’s proposal, which takes as its compass the thinking of artist Robert Filliou, and more specifically his Principles of Poetic Economy , which he developed out of artistic experiments in the 1960s. ‘He understood that social transformation requires not only new ideals but another account of how value is produced and distributed.’

Nichols has organized the Biennale around three layers: ‘the existential at macLYON, concerned with conditions of life and death, inheritance and debt; the relational at the Musée des Tissus et des Arts décoratif, focusing on forms of connection, care, and exchange; and the industrial at Les Grandes Locos, engaging processes of extraction, transformation, circulation, and flow.’

This edition offers an opportunity to discover a constellation of artists still rarely shown in France, with a particularly strong presence from the Oceanian scene. Here are six names set to make their mark at this year’s event.

Akwasi Bediako Afrane (born in 1990 in Kumasi, Ghana, where he lives and works)

Computer screens, televisions, printers, small motors… A true archaeologist of our time, Akwasi Bediako Afrane dissects the electronic objects that populate our daily lives, reassembling their fragments into interactive installations. In Lyon, the Ghanaian artist continues his pursuit to reconnect humans and machines, presenting Dance of Dialogue (2026) at Les Grandes Locos. This new work was produced during workshops with residents from the nearby town of Écully and with staff and patients from the Jean Dechaume pavilion at the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu hospital in Lyon, known for its child psychiatry department.

Hana Miletić (born in 1982 in Zagreb, lives and works between Brussels, Belgium, and Zagreb, Croatia)

Trained as a photographer, Hana Miletić translates into textile works the patterns and fragments she captures in the cities she moves through. Inspired by her great-grandmother, an active member of a weaving community in former Yugoslavia, the Croatian artist also leads felting workshops in Brussels with people living in challenging circumstances. This practice finds its natural home at the Musée des Tissus et des Arts décoratifs, where, for the Biennale, Miletić has brought together two groups from the surrounding area – from Saint-Pierreville in Ardèche and the Lyon neighborhood of Vaise – to create a large-scale tapestry in wool and silk.

Serwah Attafuah (born in 1998 in Sydney, lives and works in Dhrarug land, in Western Sydney, Australia)

Although passionate about painting, Serwah Attafuah has chosen to develop her universe in the digital realm, bringing texture, movement, and sound to the dreamlike landscapes of her imagination. The young Australian artist’s fascinating utopias, tinged with Afrofuturism, draw on ancestral myths as much as on masterpieces of classical Western painting, the colonial history of West Africa, and science-fiction narratives. This is evident in Between this World & the Next (2023-2024), a large digital fresco presented at Les Grandes Locos. The work follows several female avatars through deserted territories, their odyssey extending beyond the frame through a soundtrack and a sculptural structure created especially for the occasion.

Luke Willis Thompson (born in 1988 in Auckland, New Zealand, lives and works in London, UK)

Originally from Fiji and New Zealand, Luke Willis Thompson addresses the scars of colonization, racism, class inequality, and the mechanisms of political and media domination within his work. Alongside his performances and sculptures, his films make these forces visible from the perspective of Indigenous populations. In 2025, the artist began a video trilogy imagining a new Oceania – one that returns power to its original inhabitants. Presented at macLYON, its third and final chapter, Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa – ‘Pacific Ocean’ in Māori – takes us to present-day New Caledonia, amongst pro-independence Kanak activists.

Angela Goh (born in 1986 in Canberra, lives and works in Sydney, Australia)

Dancer and choreographer Angela Goh is particularly familiar with galleries, museums, and other exhibition spaces, which serve as the setting for her pared-back performances. Presence and absence, and the embodiment of the self through the body, are among the themes she explores through subtle orchestrations of mobility and inertia. At the Musée des Tissus, the Australian artist presents Total , a work from 2024 combining live performance and a multiscreen video work installed throughout the spaces. Utilizing this multiplication of the body, Goh shows how to ‘speak’ in the third person without ever using words.

Minh Lan Tran (born in 1997 in Hong Kong, lives and works in Paris, France)

At the core of Minh Lan Tran’s paintings are, on the one hand, words and writing, and on the other, sensations and color. On canvas, the French-Vietnamese artist layers materials and techniques – charcoal, mineral pigments, colored inks, egg tempera – to compose landscapes close to abstraction, whose tension lies in the play between emptiness and fullness, texture and saturation, presence and absence. This is evident in the three new paintings presented by the artist at macLYON, where the encounter between linen, latex, and glass oscillates between opacity and transparency.

The 18th Lyon Biennale runs from September 19 to December 13, 2026.

Akwasi Bediako Afrane is represented by Apalazzo Gallery (Brescia). Hana Miletić is represented by Gallery Tschudi (Zurich, Zuoz, Glarus) and LambdaLambdaLambda (Prishtina). Luke Willis Thompson is represented by Coastal Signs (Auckland) and Galerie Nagel Draxler (Berlin, Cologne). Angela Goh is represented by Fine Arts, Sydney (Sydney). Minh Lan Tran is represented by Balice Hertling (Paris), Jan Kaps (Cologne), and Gallery Common (Tokyo).

Matthieu Jacquet is a journalist who lives and works in Paris.

Caption for the header image: Garden of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. Photograph by Blandine Soulage.

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