9 Must-See Monumental Installations

From Milan to Hong Kong to Toronto, temporary or permanent, indoors and out, large-scale installations enliven urban settings, remote forest landscapes, even sandy beaches.

Sculptural Masterpieces From Milan To Hong Kong

March in Miami saw “Dreamscape,” Marta Minujín’s two-part outdoor exhibition at Jungle Plaza and her first public project in the city. The neon motifs in Sculpture of Desires, a massive 30-foot-tall inflatable of printed vinyl arms intertwining to form a luminous portal, riffed on the Argentine artist’s striped mattress sculptures from the 1960’s; it travels to Paris, Madrid, and Qatar over the next two years. Photography: Kris Tamburello/courtesy of the Miami Design District.

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In April, Manuel Barbieri and Magalini Marco, cofounders of creative consultancy agency Spazio MM in Milan, transformed a storefront into Specular Oasis, a surreal desert dreamscape composed of reflective walls, sand-covered flooring, and a buoyant silver-leather sofa by Cypriot designer Christine Kalia, accompanied by Giovanni Campana’s 8-hour ambient soundtrack, inviting stillness, sensation, and self-reflection.

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At M+ Hong Kong museum through July 13, the Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei’s Guernica in Sand reimagines Pablo Picasso’s 1937 anti-war masterpiece in monumental scale, 12 by 26 feet to be exact, rendered entirely in tinted sand. The ephemeral medium nods to cycles of destruction and renewal, culminating in an interactive event on June 28, when visitors are invited to walk through and dissolve a portion of the work, which performers will recreate.

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Somewhat reminiscent of The Gates by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, but in Jinshanling, China, in 2023, not New York 2005, and white not orange, The Fan rose as a sculptural field of fluttering Tencel gauze inspired by Tibetan prayer flags. Composed of 40 T-shape steel frames that ran 400 feet in length, the structure captured breeze and light, creating a kinetic and meditative visual accompaniment to an ancient stone path along the Ming Dynasty section of the Great Wall.

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Part of the broader revitalization of Jabloneček Valley—an abandoned military zone in a Czech forest now re-imagined as a cultural and ecological retreat—the land-art installation Green Agora by Atelier Partero is a collaboration between the landscape architect and fabricator So Concrete, comprised of 16 12-foot-tall columns 3D-printed in a high-performance version of the substance, combining cutting-edge tech with raw materiality. Completed in 2024, it stands as a beacon inviting more development to the area.

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After modernizing the traditional rya folk rug, the trailblazing late textile artist Maija Lavonen became known in the 1980’s for her spatial works adorning such Finnish corporate and governmental institutions as Parliament House. By the 21st century, she began incorporating light-manipulating acrylic rods and optical fibers, as seen in Forest Crown, Corridor of Light, and Surface of Light, which are among her more than 20 pieces in “Quietly Monumental” at Design Museum Helsinki through September 14.

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The Spanish artist SpY continued his investigation into sensory perception and how simple objects can be transformed through light, repetition, scale, and contrast with Blankets 2, an installation last fall at a 65,000-square-foot former weapons factory in Oviedo consisting of hundreds of salvaged metallic emergency blankets that are gold on one side, silver on the other. Water on the floor reflected the suspended array, and air flow generated a gentle rustling noise from the panels.

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Toronto’s 11th annual outdoor installation competition, Winter Stations, returned to Woodbine Beach earlier this year, showcasing four winners by international designers plus two student entries who interpreted the dawn theme by reimagining lifeguard stations as portals to metamorphosis. Among them were Peak by University of Waterloo architecture students Anita Hu, Catherine Zheng, Isaac Walsh, Jason Cai, Nadine Hijazi, and Ricardo Espinoza; Solair by Toronto Metropolitan University architectural science students Arjun Jain, Jade Wong, Finn Ferrall, Marko Sikic, and Nick Kisil; Slice of Sun by Portugal’s Cláudia Franco, Mariam Daudali, and Thomas Byrom; Parade by Jesse Beus from the U.S.; and Ascolto by France’s Ines Dessaint and Tonin Letondu.

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A+U Lab by Lawrence Kim’s further exploration into the impact of ubiquitous everyday objects when used in repetition has resulted in 41,415 Straws, an artwork appearing in public spaces in Busan, South Korea, throughout the year that’s composed of more than 41,000 plastic pieces in a five-shade palette. Constructed with custom slide-in acrylic connector sheets into a 9-by-38-foot form, the grid can be easily broken down, transported, and reassembled, and is fully recyclable.