“These pieces do not exist if the audience does not participate. We use art as an excuse to create community, because that is something we need to reclaim. To create experiences that invite us to talk with others,” Lozano-Hemmer said at a press conference.

A lighthouse sensitive to cosmic radiation, a walkway of voices that takes shape and dissolves through visitors’ interaction with archives from the National Sound Library, a sound installation composed of three thousand speakers, and a landscape of lights activated by heartbeats are some of the works through which Rafael Lozano-Hemmer returns to Mexico City.

In Unfinished Garden, Lozano-Hemmer makes invisible phenomena perceptible, such as thermal energy dispersing into wandering particles; voices transformed into patterns of sound and light; or turbulent digital currents fueled by poems in Indigenous languages shared by their authors.

In addition to the artist, twenty-one people participated in the creation of the project, which includes three new installations as well as recent works that have been reconfigured to inhabit the MAM and enter into dialogue with its architecture, collection, and sculpture garden. The exhibition’s title points to its conceptual axis: the “unfinished,” understood less as a lack than as a critical stance that rejects closure and totalization. For the artist, the unfinished also represents hope.

“My works are characterized by being unfinished and out of control… They depend on participation to exist, and that can be profoundly revealing. Delegating responsibility to the public is a conceptual decision, but also a political one: an acknowledgment that meaning cannot be found without interaction,” he stated.

The artist’s lines of aesthetic research, present across the nine pieces, propose a reconfiguration of technology to generate shared experiences: “Art as an excuse to create community is something we need to reclaim. To create experiences that invite people to talk to others.”

Lozano-Hemmer also emphasized that the installation incorporates various environmental protection measures: all light sources are equipped with ultraviolet (UV) cutoff filters to prevent the disorientation of migratory birds; pathway lighting operates on solar energy; and the use of high-efficiency LED systems keeps energy consumption to a minimum.

The project is part of the Art Parcours series, outdoor nighttime exhibitions in natural settings developed by Antimodular Research, Lozano-Hemmer’s Montreal-based studio. Previous editions include Listening Forest (2022–23), which transformed the Ozark Forest at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Translation Island (2023) on the deserted Lulu Island in Abu Dhabi. In the MAM Sculpture Garden, the series takes on renewed resonance.

The Museo de Arte Moderno begins 2026 with Unfinished Garden, an exhibition that marks Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s return to Mexican institutions after ten years. His return represents an opportunity for the public—especially young audiences—to engage with the immersive experiences the artist creates through installations with sound, audiovisual, and light components.

“Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Unfinished Garden” will be on view from February 11 to April 25, 2026. Visiting hours are Wednesdays and Thursdays from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m., and Fridays and Saturdays from 7:00 p.m. to midnight.

Each visit lasts approximately 60 to 90 minutes. Tickets are available through the Fever platform and at the MAM box office, located at Paseo de la Reforma and Gandhi s/n, First Section, Chapultepec Park