5 SHOWS is the new Artissima twice-monthly feature that recommends 5 exhibitions not to be missed in various geographical areas and cities around the world, chosen from the viewpoint of curators and directors of important institutions who live and work in these contexts. A different way to find guidance in the discovery of global contemporary art, from a personal and always up-to-date perspective.

The fifth focus is on New York, with a selection by Sohrab Mohebbi, Director at SculptureCenter in New York.

Here are the 5 exhibitions currently on display that he has chosen for our readers:

Pat Oleszko: Fool Disclosure
SculptureCenter

Up to 27.04.2026

SculptureCenter presents the first solo exhibition in a New York City institution in over 35 years of Pat Oleszko. Rooted in humor, sharp social commentary, and the defiance of all forms of authority, Oleszko’s sculptures lend themselves to raucous performances that use linguistic wit to address concerns about the state of the world. As her work developed, Oleszko devised some defining strategies: using her body, which led to costumes, and using air, which produced large inflatable works. In both cases, her art “walked out the door,” in her words, “using all the world as a stooge.”
►READ MORE

Tehching Hsieh: Lifeworks 1978–1999
Dia Beacon

Long-term view

Following Tehching Hsieh’s gift of 11 career-defining works to Dia in 2024, Tehching Hsieh: Lifeworks 1978–1999 is the first retrospective of the Taiwanese American artist’s radical performances. The exhibition covers 1978 through 1999, a period in which Hsieh enacted his five iconic One Year Performances followed by Tehching Hsieh 1986–1999 (Thirteen Year Plan). For each of the yearlong works, Hsieh lived locked in a wooden cage; punched a time clock in his studio every hour, on the hour; lived outside, navigating New York’s streets without shelter; was tied to another artist, Linda Montano, by an eight-foot rope; and refrained entirely from making, viewing, reading about, or speaking of art, respectively.
►READ MORE

Lotty Rosenfeld: Disobedient Spaces
Wallach Art Gallery

Up to 15.03.2026

Lotty Rosenfeld: Disobedient Spaces is the first US retrospective of Chilean artist Lotty Rosenfeld (b. 1943, Santiago; d. 2020, Santiago), and presents installation and video projection foregrounding questions of public space, as well as archival documents, prints, and photographs spanning from 1970 to 2019. The exhibition’s title references “disobedient space” as feminist space, an approach that emerged from extensive research and dialogue between the two curators, Julia Bryan-Wilson, a professor at Columbia University, and Natalia Brizuela, a professor at UC Berkeley.
►READ MORE

The Earth, the Fire, the Water, and the Winds: For a Museum of Errantry with Édouard Glissant
CARA

Up to 10.05.2026

The Earth, the Fire, the Water, and the Winds: For a Museum of Errantry with Édouard Glissant is the first US exhibition of the Martinican poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant’s (1928–2011) personal art collection.

Traveling from Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo, Brazil, The Earth, the Fire, the Water, and the Winds reveals a lesser-known dimension of Glissant’s life: his vision for a museum. He conceived of it not as a monument, but as a space capable of holding art, memories, and intertwined histories without reducing them to colonial frameworks.
►READ MORE

Sareh Imani: When the wind dies down, and the rain grows gentle
56 Henry

Up to 15.03.2026

When the wind dies down, and the rain grows gentle consists of large-scale pastel pencil drawings developed through close engagement with small arrangements of natural materials. The drawings depict leaves, twigs, petals, seed pods, and other organic elements rendered at a significantly enlarged scale, forms that are often seen but rarely noticed.

The drawings are developed through a process grounded in direct observation. The artist begins by collecting found and foraged materials during long walks through the forests of Upstate New York, where she lives. These materials are in various stages of decay and part of the natural cycle of life, shaped by time and seasonal change.
►READ MORE

If you want to discover the institutions explored so far, here are the previous episodes:
Emirati Arabi Uniti | China | Norway | London