Lee Bul at M+: Inside Hong Kong's Most Talked-About Exhibition of 2026

If you only make time for one show at M+ this summer, make it this one. The Lee Bul exhibition at M+ — titled From 1998 to Now — has become the most talked-about exhibition in Hong Kong right now, and for good reason. It is the first major survey in the city of one of Asia's most influential living artists, a sweep of shimmering cyborgs, biomechanical bodies and crumbling utopias that fills the museum's largest gallery. Whether you follow contemporary art closely or simply want one genuinely unmissable cultural outing this season, here is exactly what to expect and how to plan your visit.

Why everyone's talking about it

Hong Kong sees a lot of art. Between Art Basel, the West Kowloon galleries and a packed commercial scene, a show has to do something special to dominate the conversation. This one does.

From 1998 to Now is the most comprehensive survey of Lee Bul ever staged in the city, co-organised by M+ and the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul. It debuted in Seoul in September 2025, where it drew roughly 105,000 visitors before travelling to Hong Kong. After M+, it tours on to Europe and North America — so this is a rare window to see it in Asia.

The pull is partly the work itself, which photographs beautifully and rewards a slow walk-through, and partly the timing. Lee Bul's themes — bodies fused with machines, the seductive shine of technology, the wreckage of grand utopian dreams — feel pointed in an age of AI and automation. That mix of spectacle and substance is why it keeps surfacing across social feeds and culture pages alike.

Who is Lee Bul?

Lee Bul (born 1964) is one of the most prominent contemporary artists to emerge from Asia in recent decades. The Seoul-based South Korean artist made her name in the 1990s with provocative performance and sculpture, then with the Cyborg series that first brought her international acclaim.

Those works — sleek, headless, partly human and partly machine — drew on critical theory, art history and science fiction to ask hard questions about figuration, gender and beauty in an increasingly technological world. Since then she has built large-scale, mirrored architectural installations that turn whole rooms into glittering, disorienting environments. Her practice runs from the intimate to the monumental, which is exactly what a survey of this scale sets out to show.

What you'll actually see

The exhibition unfolds in three sections that span the artist's career, and M+ has staged it across the museum's cavernous West Gallery. Here is how it is organised, according to the museum.

1. The utopias: Mon grand récit

You open into an immersive landscape built from Lee's Mon grand récit series (2005–ongoing) — complex architectural installations that meditate on the grand narratives of the modernist project and what she calls "the aesthetics of failed utopias." This section also folds in two-dimensional works from her Untitled (Willing To Be Vulnerable—Velvet) and Perdu series, with their mother-of-pearl shimmer.

2. The cyborgs: Cyborg and Anagram

The second chapter is the one many visitors come for: the groundbreaking Cyborg and Anagram works from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Combining references from critical theory, art history and science fiction, these striking sculptures explore entwined ideas of the body, gender and beauty. They are the pieces that built her global reputation, and they remain genuinely arresting in person.

3. The studio: drawings and maquettes

The final section evokes an artist's studio, gathering a constellation of drawings, sketches and maquettes. It is the quietest room and, for many, the most revealing — a look at how Lee conceptualises and realises work that can otherwise feel almost impossibly polished. In total the survey brings together more than 200 works dating from the late 1990s to 2024.

For context on how M+ fits into the wider city, our guide to the best art galleries in Hong Kong 2026 maps the museum against the commercial scene, and our round-up of the best public art installations in Hong Kong covers the free, outdoor work you can pair with a ticketed visit.

Dates, tickets & opening hours

This is a special exhibition with a fixed run, so there is a real deadline — it closes on 9 August 2026. The full details are on the official M+ exhibition page, but here are the verified essentials.

The special exhibition ticket also admits you to the wider M+ galleries the same day, so it is good value if you make an afternoon of it. M+ guides run free 10–15 minute talks in the gallery from Tuesday to Sunday for ticket-holders, which are a quick, low-commitment way into the work if you are new to Lee Bul.

How do you get to M+ for the Lee Bul show?

M+ sits on the harbourfront in the West Kowloon Cultural District, and the easiest approach is by train. Take the MTR to Kowloon Station and leave via Exit C1 or D1, or use Austin Station, Exit B4/B5; from either it is a walk of roughly 10 to 15 minutes through the district to the waterfront. The Airport Express also calls at Kowloon Station, which makes the museum an easy stop straight off a flight.

Once you are there, the cultural district rewards lingering — the Art Park, the harbour promenade and the Xiqu Centre are all within a short stroll, and the M+ Cinema programmes arthouse and repertory screenings if you want to round out the day. Our guide to the best art house cinemas in Hong Kong has the details on what's showing.

How to do it well

A survey of this size deserves more than a quick lap. A few practical notes to get the most out of it.

If contemporary art is your thing, build it into a bigger cultural weekend: our look at the biggest events in Hong Kong this summer has the wider calendar, and the Hong Kong street art walking guide takes the conversation out of the museum and onto the city's walls.

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