The Spell or The Dream, Somerset House. Photography © David Parry

Tai Shani

The Spell or The Dream

Opening October 11th until September 2026

Turner Prize-winning, Somerset House Studios artist Tai Shani presents: The Spell or The Dream, arriving at Jupiter this autumn. A new work for the landscape, The Spell or The Dream is a multi-faceted work inviting audiences to collectively dream of new horizons.

At its heart is The Spell, a magnificent new sculpture sited in Jupiter’s orchard of apple and plum trees. Resting atop a stepped plinth, where visitors can sit, gather or peer inside, the luminous blue figure gently breathes, caught in a suspended state, the spell. The dreamer sleeps through the warnings of present and imminent catastrophes, political and social disaster and environmental collapse – but it also dreams of resistance and renewal. The work features a newly commissioned soundscape by composer, producer and double bassist Maxwell Sterling.

The Spell or The Dream (2025) was commissioned by and developed in residence at Somerset House Studios. Commission and touring presentations made possible with Art Fund support.

About Tai Shani

Tai Shani is an artist living and working in London. She is the joint 2019 Turner Prize winner together with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock and Oscar Murillo. In 2019 Tai was a Max Mara prize nominee. In 2025, Shani presented The Sun Is a Flame That Haunts The Night, as part of the High Line, New York, commission programme. During August 2025, Shani will bring together sculpture, radio and live gatherings under a large-scale commission at Somerset House, London.

Shani’s most recent solo exhibitions include The World to Me Was A Secret: Caesious, Zinnober, Celadon, and Virescent at The Cosmic House, UK and Lavish Phantoms of the House of Dust at Gio Marconi, Milan, Italy. In 2023, Shani was the subject of solo exhibitions at KM21, The Hague, and the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. Her work has been shown at British Art Show 09, Touring (2021), CentroCentro, Madrid (2019–20), Turner Contemporary, UK (2019); Grazer Kunst Verein, Austria (2019); Nottingham Contemporary, UK (2019); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy (2019); Glasgow International, UK (2018); Tensta Konsthall, Sweden (2017), Wysing Arts Centre, UK (2017); Serpentine Galleries, UK (2016); Tate, UK (2016); and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Ireland (2016).

Tai Shani’s artistic practice, comprising performance, film, photography, and installation, uses experimental writing as a guiding method. Oscillating between theoretical concepts and visceral details, Shani’s texts attempt to create poetic coordinates in order to cultivate, fragmentary cosmologies of marginalised non-sovereignty. Taking cues from both mournful and undead histories of reproductive labour, illness and solidarity, her work is invested in recovering feminised aesthetic modes – such as the floral, the trippy or the gothic – in a register of utopian militancy. In this vein, the epic, in both its literary long-form and excessive affect, often shapes Shani’s approach: Her long-term projects work through historical and mythical narratives, such as Christine de Pizan’s allegorical city of women or the social history of psychedelic ergot poisoning. Extending into divergent formats and collaborations. Shani’s projects examine desire in its (infra-)structural dimension, exploring a realism that materially fantasises against the patriarchal racial capitalist present.

The Spell or The Dream (2025) was commissioned by and developed in residence at Somerset House Studios. 

 Commission made possible with Art Fund support. Photography: Tim Bowditch