Theo Triantafyllidis | Frieze London Artist Award 2026

Frieze London Artist Award 2026
The Regent's Park
14–18 October 2026

Theo Triantafyllidis
Feral Metaverse (Spider)

Forma are delighted to announce artist Theo Triantafyllidis as the recipient of the 2026 Frieze London Artist Award. His new commission, Feral Metaverse (Spider), is co-commissioned and co-produced by Forma and Frieze and, for the first time, presented in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture.

The commission marks the eighth year of Forma and Frieze’s partnership on the Artist Award, through which we have supported artists to develop and realise ambitious new works at pivotal moments in their practices.

For the 2026 edition, artists were invited to propose projects exploring the creative possibilities of advanced technologies. Triantafyllidis’ winning proposal, Feral Metaverse (Spider), is a participatory sculpture that builds upon his ongoing multiplayer game, extending it into physical space.

Triantafyllidis’ practice establishes performative systems in which natural and synthetic intelligences coexist. Working across games, live simulations, performance and installation, he creates darkly mischievous worlds that use the logic of play and simulation to explore the conditions of ecological collapse, social entanglement and networked desire.

At the centre of his practice is the body: primal, sexual, comedic and often overwhelmed, caught between ancient instincts and the accelerating systems we inhabit. His characters — human, animal, monster or machine — teeter between control and surrender, humour and dread, intimacy and spectacle, searching for a tender, hormonal core in an overstimulated world.

For Feral Metaverse (Spider), these ongoing concerns take shape through a thought experiment: what might online common spaces look like if they were built around cooperation, vulnerability, awkwardness and care?

Situated at the heart of the fair’s Focus section, Triantafyllidis’ imposing spider-like sculpture transforms the booth and disrupts the traditional relationship between viewer and artwork. Visitors are invited to climb, hold, balance and coordinate with one another in order to play the game.

The spider becomes an unlikely protagonist - at once strange, scary, intelligent and crafty yet, unexpectedly tender. From afar, the sculpture might appear threatening; up close, its soft form invites physical contact and becomes the entry point into the artist’s shared digital environment. Here, control is not given to a single player but negotiated between multiple bodies, requiring players to move, respond and cooperate with one another.

Sitting somewhere between artwork and social experiment, Feral Metaverse (Spider) brings the bodily and digital worlds of Triantafyllidis’ practice together. As players move, connect and collaborate, temporary towers, wheels, group hugs and spider forms emerge, extending the game environment into physical space and the virtual into the real.

Theo Triantafyllidis, says:

It's a great honour to be given this kind of opportunity, visibility and audience at such a key moment in my practice. I get to assemble my team in Athens and push both the game and the sculptural form further than ever before, with a group of people who really believe in the project and the vision, but who can also challenge it and support it. It feels like a supported leap of faith, and a real next step for the work.