Frieze Los Angeles returns to Santa Monica Airport from 26th February to 1st March 2026, reaffirming its focus on artist-led commissions, public art and long-term engagement with the city’s creative communities.
At the heart of the 2026 edition is Frieze Projects: Body & Soul, the fair’s fourth consecutive public art programme produced in partnership with Art Production Fund. Bringing together newly commissioned works by Los Angeles–based artists, the programme unfolds across the Frieze campus and beyond, and remains free and open to the public.
This year’s artists explore the human body across physical, temporal and spiritual dimensions. Among the highlights is Amanda Ross-Ho’s durational performance Untitled Orbit (MANUAL MODE), in which the artist will roll a 16-foot inflatable Earth around the perimeter of the Airport Park Soccer Field throughout the fair’s opening hours, turning planetary motion into a test of human endurance.
Cosmas & Damian Brown will present Fountain: Sources of Light, his first major public installation: six ceramic heads encircling a fountain, releasing incense as water falls into metal vessels that visitors can rearrange, subtly altering sound and rhythm. The work also incorporates a youth workshop through Art Production Fund’s Art Sundae programme, with children contributing painted metal plates and bowls to the sculpture.
Other new commissions include Shana Hoehn’s Deadfall, a large-scale sculpture made from a tree sourced through Santa Monica’s Urban Forest programme; Kohshin Finley’s shadow-boxed stoneware installation …and someone was playing the piano, right?; and two outdoor works by Dan John Anderson, whose stained-glass and bronze sculptures blur the line between figure, furniture and totem. Polly Borland will present BOD, her largest sculpture to date — a seven-foot aluminium figure that translates her signature soft-sculpture language into a monumental physical form.
Frieze Projects will also extend beyond the fairgrounds, with Kelly Wall’s Everything Must Go transforming a former Westwood Village newsstand into a glowing installation of glass “magazines,” mirrored by illuminated newspaper boxes across the Santa Monica Airport site.
Beyond Frieze Projects, Frieze Los Angeles 2026 will feature a major neon installation by Patrick Martinez, whose work addresses immigration and ICE raids across the city, alongside a site-specific collaboration with AMBOS (Art Made Between Opposite Sides) focused on the wishes of trans migrants.
The fair will also continue its suite of prizes and acquisition funds. Napoles Marty is the recipient of the 2026 Frieze Los Angeles Impact Prize, receiving a solo presentation, a $25,000 award and mentorship from curator Diana Nawi, in partnership with NXTHVN and WME. The Deutsche Bank Frieze Los Angeles Film Award returns for its seventh year, supporting six emerging filmmakers through a four-month programme, while the Santa Monica Art Bank Acquisition Fund will again acquire works from the fair for the city’s public collection.
Frieze Los Angeles 2026 is supported by global lead partner Deutsche Bank, continuing the fair’s emphasis on ambitious artistic production rooted in the life of the city.
