Serpentine has announced hightlights from their 2025 exhibition program. Solo exhibitions of Arpita Singh, Giuseppe Penone and Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley will be presented in the galleries.
Next year will also mark a quarter century since Serpentine’s ambitious annual Pavilion commission began with Dame Zaha Hadid’s inaugural structure in Hyde Park in 2000.
“We are honoured to kickstart 2025 with London’s first institutional exhibition by Arpita Singh, who for more than half a century has produced a prolific body of work as one of India’s most singular painters and whom we first encountered during the research for the 2007 exhibition at Serpentine South titled Indian Highway. Through a practice that blends Bengali folk art with modernist explorations of identity, Singh vividly portrays scenes of life and imagination, stories, and symbols, uniting the personal and the universal. This landmark exhibition builds on Serpentine’s legacy of spotlighting trailblazing artists yet to receive global recognition for their work, like Luchita Hurtado, Faith Ringgold, Hervé Télémaque, James Barnor, Kamala Ibrahim Ishag, and Barbara Chase-Riboud.”
Bettina Korek, CEO, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director
Arpita Singh Serpentine North 13th March – 27th July 2025
Opening in March 2025, Serpentine will present the first solo exhibition of Arpita Singh outside India, featuring key works selected in close collaboration with the artist from her prolific career spanning more than six decades.
Singh’s paintings draw on Indian miniatures and narratives, interwoven with immediate experiences of social upheaval and international humanitarian crises. Remembering at Serpentine North will explore the full breadth of her practice, ranging from large-scale oil paintings to more intimate watercolours and ink drawings.
Born in Kolkota in 1937, Singh emerged in the 1960s, developing a painting practice that blends figuration and Surrealism, drawing inspiration from miniaturist painting and Bengali folk art. She combined this with periods of abstraction, using pen, ink and pastels to form dynamic lines and perforations on the surface to create layers and textures. From the 1990s, Singh increasingly explored themes of gender, motherhood, feminine sensuality and vulnerability, alongside metaphors of violence and political unrest in India and internationally. Singh resists singular interpretation, explaining, ‘I know that when the work grows the starting point melts, references become signals to lead anybody or everybody to the desired place. I don’t remember myself, the frame breaks and I, the woman, stand there as anybody, as everybody.’
The exhibition builds on Serpentine’s legacy of spotlighting the work of pioneering artists who have not yet received the recognition they deserve in London. Past exhibitions include Faith Ringgold, Luchita Hurtado, James Barnor, and most recently, Barbara Chase-Riboud. To accompany the exhibition, Serpentine will publish a new catalogue, commissioning key authors, thinkers and other creatives to highlight Singh’s significant role in contemporary international art and her influence across generations and disciplines. The culmination of extensive research across India, Indian Highways was presented at Serpentine South in 2008 – 2009 as a snapshot of a vibrant generation of artists working across a range of media. Arpita Singh’s work was first encountered during the research for this show.
Giuseppe Penone Serpentine South 3rd April – Septeber 2025
Opening in April 2025, Serpentine South will present a solo exhibition by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone (b. 1947, Garessio). This will be the most comprehensive survey of his practice in a major London institution, featuring sculptures and works on paper from 1977 to today. A leading figure in Arte Povera, Penone experimented with a wide range of materials including wood, iron, wax, bronze, terracotta, and plaster, bringing their individual physical qualities to the fore. Situated in the surroundings of Kensington Gardens, the exhibition will showcase the artist’s continued interest in the relationship between humans and the natural world.
With a career spanning over five decades, Penone’s expansive oeuvre encompasses sculptures, drawings, painting, installations, and photography. Born in Garessio, a village near Cuneo, Italy, Penone is influenced by the forested region of Northern Italy. The vegetal world is a central subject in his work, creating his first Alberi (Trees) in 1969, he cites the tree as ‘primal and most simple idea of vitality, of culture, of sculpture’. Through uncovering the visual, tactile and olfactory aspects of the materials he uses, Penone’s work highlights the interconnected nature of beings, both living and non-living, in existence.
Giuseppe Penone’s work has been featured in exhibitions worldwide, including at the Fondazione Ferrero, Alba, (2024-2025); Galleria Borghese, Rome (2023); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2022, 2004); Philadelphia Museum of Art (2022); Villa Medici, Rome (2021) and Palais d’léna – CESE, Paris, France (2019). He currently lives and works in Turin, Italy.
Ecologies at Serpentine encompass myriad convenings, networks, infrastructural and long-term research projects which hold ecology and the environment at their core. Giuseppe Penone was one of the participants of the Garden Marathon featured at Serpentine in 2011. This two-day event was an exploration of the concept of the garden. The artist is also featured in the book 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth, published by Serpentine and Penguin.
25 years of Serpentine Pavillion comission in 2025
This pioneering commission, which began in 2000 with Dame Zaha Hadid, has presented the first UK structures by some of the biggest names in international architecture.
2025 will see the unveiling of a new Pavilion and kickstart a programme of events to reflect on the commission, its history and its future. The Pavilion is realised with the support of technical advisors AECOM. In recent years it has grown into a highly anticipated showcase for emerging talents, from Sumayya Vally, Counterspace (South Africa), the youngest architect to be commissioned, and Frida Escobedo (Mexico), to Diébédo Francis Kéré (Burkina Faso) and Bjarke Ingels (Denmark). In 2022, Black Chapel was designed by Theaster Gates (US), in 2023 À table was designed by Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture (France and Lebanon), and in 2024 Archipelagic Void was designed by Minsuk Cho, Mass Studies (South Korea).
Serpentine will present Park Nights, its experimental, interdisciplinary, live programme sited within the annual architectural commission. Since 2002, Park Nights has presented performances across art, music, film, theatre, dance, literature, philosophy, fashion, and technology. Each year’s commissions respond to the unique architecture of the Pavilion, inviting audiences to experience the activated space.
Serpentine Arts Technologies exhibition Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley Serpentine North Autumn 2025 -2026
In Autumn 2025, Berlin and London-based artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley (b. 1995, London) will present a major new collaborative video game, exhibition and R&D project, commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies, at Serpentine North.
Working predominantly in animation, sound, performance, and video game development, Brathwaite-Shirley’s practice focuses on intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively archive and empower Black Trans stories.
Encouraging the active participation of the visitor-player in her installations, the artist highlights the role of individual choices in shaping narratives and histories. The project will bring together artists, technologists, interaction designers and specialist researchers to expand the artist’s exploration of the creative and civic potential of video game technologies.
Building on her love of retro choose-your-own-adventure games, improv theatre and new research into online communities, digital democracy and the extreme polarisation of today’s world, this project implicates the ‘audience as medium’ to activate and complete the work. At the core of the project will be a new game that will be developed over the course of the next year. Conceptualised as a ‘performance machine’, or performance infrastructure, the game will be activated throughout an immersive exhibition, which will function as a live playtest, ‘social experiment’ and living archive, where players’ inputs determine how the story – a speculative future fiction – continues.
Serpentine Arts Technologies has been working with Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley since 2021, when she was invited to contribute to Future Art Ecosystems 2: Art x Metaverse, a report that examined how the metaverse represents a fundamental shift in our notion of digital systems and the impact of the video games industry on art and culture. Since then, Serpentine Arts Technologies has collaborated on R&D, developing prototypes and experimental hybrid gaming projects including WE CAN’T DO THIS ALONE, YOUR PRESENCE ALONE CHANGES HOW OTHERS BREATHE, and THE LACK.
WE CAN’T DO THIS ALONE hosted in 2022, was an interactive playtesting event in the form of a live improv play, where the audience became the actors. YOUR PRESENCE ALONE CHANGES HOW OTHERS BREATHE, in 2022, was conceived as an interactive murder mystery and conversation hosted via Twitch. THE LACK: I KNEW YOUR VOICE BEFORE YOU SPOKE was commissioned in collaboration with Art Night and NeON Digital Arts for Art Night Dundee in 2023. In this dystopic, interactive art video game, audiences shaped a new world through their interactions, highlighting the urgency of choices in a time of meteoric change.
This marks the continuation of Serpentine Arts Technologies’ ongoing commitment to video game technologies, in particular game engines, through commissions such as Ian Cheng, Bad Corgi (2015) and B.O.B. (2018), Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Catharsis (2020); Trust, Hivemind (2022) and Gabriel Massan & Collaborators, Third World: The Bottom Dimension (2023). As with the current exhibition, Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst: The Call, the project will be supported by the Future Art Ecosystems initiative in the development of technical, legal and creative R&D to be shared with the wider cultural sector that explores how to embed technological spaces with ethical and community-focused infrastructures.
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art, London in 2019. Danielle’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions and performances at institutions including Fundació Joan Miró (2024); LAS (2024); Studio Voltaire (2024); SCAD (2023); ArtNight (2023); FACT (2022); David Kordansky, LA (2022); Project Arts Centre, Ireland (2022); Skänes konstförening, Malmö, Sweden (2022); Arebyte Gallery (2021); QUAD (2021); Albright-Knox (2021); and Science Gallery, London (2020). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at institutions including WSA (2024), Julia Stoschek Foundation (2022); Les Urbaines (2019); Barbican (2018).
LIVE PROGRAMME | PERFORMANCE COMMISSION | LEWIS WALKER | SPRING 2025
Serpentine will presenta newly commissioned autobiographical work by Lewis Walker in Spring 2025. The performance will examine the queered body and delve into the forced fluidity of identity.
Lewis Walker (they/them) is a London-born queer, non-binary movement artist. A former gymnast, Walker transitioned from the world of elite gymnastics to become a dancer, choreographer, and movement director.
The performance will investigate how queer and trans bodies defy boundaries to become hybrids that constantly adapt to a world that tries to confine them. Through gymnastics, contortion and movement, Walker uses their body and dance as a vessel for transformation, guiding them into the next chapter of their constantly evolving physical and mental being.
The work asks: What if our true nature is found in the constant act of becoming, of transformation? This performance reclaims queerness as a gateway to evolution and hybridity, where the future belongs to those who change, adapt, and grow.
Lewis Walker graduated with a degree in Contemporary Dance & Choreography from London Contemporary Dance School and have since worked across theatre, film, fashion, music, and commercial sectors.
Previous works include UNTITLAB’s fashion week presentation at The ICA, and in early 2024, they premiered their original work Compete For Me at The Place Theatre, closing the Resolution Festival. In 2023, they were shortlisted for the Sadler’s Wells Young Associate program and presented Family Piece at the Lilian Baylis Theatre. Beyond their stage and screen work, Walker is committed to making movement more accessible and inclusive. They lead the popular workshop Connecting To Improv, which focuses on dance improvisation and aims to open up movement to all. Their passion for merging art with wellbeing has recently manifested in MOVE HYPNO, a unique collaboration with hypnotherapist Michele Occelli, blending hypnotherapy and movement to support personal transformation.
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