James Lewis
18th Biennale de Lyon, France
18 September - 31 December 2026
Founded in 1991, the Biennale de Lyon is the most important large-scale festival of contemporary art in France. The 18thedition in 2026 is curated by Catherine Nichols. Her curatorial concept emphasises storytelling, transformation and the role of art in addressing complex social, political and environmental issues.
For the 18th Biennale de Lyon, James Lewis will expand his 2022 work Not just suffering, but all forms of consciousness (Resend), a series of sunflower-like, concrete sculptures that appeared to grow from the waste of construction and environmental destruction. Responding to the industrial history of Lyon and its present-day environmental challenges, he will create an installation that combines sculptural growths with sonic material drawn from archival and contemporary sources. The work will consider how plants, infrastructures and humans adapt to hostile environments, and how value is assigned within economies of survival.
James Lewis (born 1986 in London) lives and works in Vienna. His practice explores the entanglement of ecological fragility and technological systems. Working across sculpture, sound and installation, he draws attention to how environments are shaped by industrial processes, datafication and the accumulation of waste materials. His works often evoke botanical or geological forms, yet are built from the debris of human activity, pointing to cycles of extraction, consumption and survival. His work asks how life can adapt after systems of exploitation, and what resilience might look like in their aftermath.
This is his first collaboration with Phileas.
This project was aided by a research trip to Vienna by the curator Catherine Nichols, organised by Phileas in March 2025.
