teamLab lands in Chicago: immersive installations fill the Smart Museum in its first Midwest exhibition

The international art collective teamLab, based in Tokyo and founded in 2001 by Toshiyuki Inoko, presents its first exhibition in the American Midwest at the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago — “teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity” — which, as USA Art News reports, includes several of the collective’s most iconic digital installations alongside new works created especially for this exhibition.

Among the new commissions is “Sea of Darkness, Memory Shining from the Depths” (2026), a digital projection creating the illusion of a black veil undulating against a hammered copper wall; “Order in Chaos” (2026) responds to physical touch, generating vivid lines across surfaces; and “Dissipative Figures – Human” (2026), which fills an entire room with flowing, undulating black-and-white figures. Also part of the exhibition are “Massless Suns and Dark Suns” and “The World of Irreversible Change” (2022), as well as “Continuous Life and Death at the Now of Eternity II” (2019), which adapts to its environment: it brightens with sunrise and darkens with sunset in Chicago.

teamLab is made up of hundreds of artists, animators, musicians, mathematicians, programmers and engineers who explore the intersection of art, science and technology. According to the Smart Museum’s official website, the exhibition follows the collective’s 25-year trajectory and how it has expanded the use of digital technologies to create environments that blur the boundary between viewer and artwork, with an emphasis on individual perception within a collective experience.

The exhibition runs from 22 September 2026 to 21 February 2027 and marks teamLab’s long relationship with the University of Chicago, where the work “Ever Blossoming Life” has been on permanent display since 2021. A festive public opening was held on 3 October, with a musical performance by Japanese sound artist Kikù Hibino.