Artist Makiko Harris Announces 2026 Programme from New Contemporaries to International Solo Exhibition

Artist Makiko Harris enters 2026 with an ambitious programme spanning major UK public institutions and international galleries. The year opens with her selection for New Contemporaries 2026, the UK’s premier showcase for emerging talent, currently showing at South London Gallery before touring to MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) from May. The selection serves as the springboard for a year that moves from the continued evolution of Harris’s Needle Dance project to a solo exhibition of new work at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in West Palm Beach, Florida this September, before culminating in a London group exhibition later in the year, alongside further exhibitions and showings across Europe to be announced.

Working across sculpture, installation, painting, film and performance, Harris’s practice explores gender, identity and structures of power. Transforming symbols historically associated with femininity - including needles, nails and stockings - into monumental forms, her work examines feminist resistance, bodily autonomy and intergenerational connection through material, scale and collaboration.

The first half of 2026 builds on the sustained momentum of Needle Dance, a multidisciplinary project developed over the past two years that explores how tools of domestic labour are reimagined as sites of power. The project reached a landmark milestone in 2025 with an underwater conceptual film premiered at art’otel London Hoxton, where dancers bound in red rope served as a powerful visual metaphor that deepened the work’s exploration of gender and relationality.

As one of only 26 artists selected for New Contemporaries 2026 by a panel including Pio Abad, Louise Giovanelli and Grace Ndiritu, Harris joins a cohort that has historically served as a barometer for the future of British art. For the exhibition, she will present Sentinel - a spatial intervention of oversized, powder-coated and brass-plated steel needles that isolates the sculptural language of the wider Needle Dance project, foregrounding physical presence and scale. New Contemporaries 2026 is presented across two public institutions, at South London Gallery from 30th January to 12th April before touring to MIMA, Middlesbrough from 8th May to 16th August. 

This spring, Harris will debut a new iteration of Needle Dance in the form of a live performance piece in London. Reuniting with her core creative team from the film - costume designer Deborah Milner and composer Carlos Basilisco - the work shifts Needle Dance towards raw performance art, exploring the body, sound and material resistance in a live gallery context.

Speaking on the year ahead, Harris says, “My work often begins with materials and symbols that are overlooked or dismissed, particularly those associated with domestic labour or femininity; I want to continue to test those ideas, at scale, in 2026. Needle Dance is expanding into live performance, while I’m also developing new work around intimacy, memory and collective making. I’m excited to share new work and to bring existing bodies of work to new audiences in different contexts.”

Alongside her work with Needle Dance, Harris is developing a brand-new body of work for a solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in West Palm Beach, Florida, opening in September. Marking a conceptual shift beyond the Needle Dance framework, the exhibition will feature large-scale paintings and monumental steel structures, including collaborative ‘Fishnet’ paintings, new oversized needle sculptures and The Locket series, examining how history and connection are worn and preserved.

Spanning public institutions, live performance and an international solo exhibition, Harris’s 2026 programme builds on the momentum of Needle Dance while opening into new material. 

Makiko Harris’s work Sentinel is currently on view as part of the New Contemporaries exhibition at South London Gallery until 12 April. Find out more about the exhibition here: https://www.southlondongallery.org/exhibitions/new-contemporaries-2026/. Further information and upcoming exhibitions can be found at https://www.makikoharris.com