Image: New World, Düsseldorf
Mudam Luxembourg is showing Simon Fujiwara’s 'A Whole New World' from 20 March to 23 August 2026, presenting nearly twenty years of the artist’s work in an exhibition that spans painting, film, performance, animation and storytelling. The museum says the project brings together diverse forms to create portraits of the twenty-first century as it unfolds, with Fujiwara using those mediums to examine the contemporary world’s beauty, complexity, absurdities and contradictions.
According to Mudam, the exhibition is structured around Fujiwara’s interest in how society represents itself and how that self-image can become exaggerated or invented. The museum describes recurring motifs in the artist’s practice as including iconic figures, cartoons, theme parks, mass tourist sites and museums. Rather than treating these surfaces at face value, the exhibition positions them as entry points into larger questions about authenticity, artificiality and the images people build around themselves.
Fujiwara, born in London in 1982, is identified by Mudam as a British Japanese artist whose work also addresses history, mythology, sexuality, psychoanalysis, architecture, art history and anthropology. The exhibition text emphasizes that these subjects are tied closely to his lived experience, giving the work a personal lens while opening onto broader social questions. Mudam’s presentation also notes that Fujiwara’s practice aims to hold a mirror up to society, reflecting life in a fast-moving, image-saturated era through experiences that are playful, surreal and sometimes unsettling.
The exhibition is curated by Léon Kruijswijk, assisted by Nicole Wittmann. Mudam states that the show is accompanied by booklet materials in easy-to-read language in English, French and German, as well as English access notes and miniguides in English, French and German. A signed exhibition catalogue is also available through the museum’s website.
The institution’s online materials place the exhibition within a broader programme that also includes other summer 2026 projects, but 'A Whole New World' is presented as a standalone survey of Fujiwara’s practice at Mudam Luxembourg. The exhibition page shows a single installation view credited to the artist, Gió Marconi in Milano, TARO NASU in Tokyo, Dvir Gallery in Paris, Tel Aviv and Brussels, and Esther Schipper in Berlin, Paris and Seoul, photographed by Andrea Rossetti.
Mudam’s description of 'A Whole New World' also notes that Fujiwara’s work draws on a long visual and conceptual range while remaining grounded in personal experience. The museum says the exhibition uses those tools to reveal the breadth of an artist who has worked across media and who looks at how contemporary culture stages itself. The show remains on view at Mudam Luxembourg until 23 August 2026.
