Perspectives on Sensory Art Practices
A Roundtable Discussion with Art Senses Artist of the Year 2026 Jury
Arising from the intersection of wellness culture and contemporary art, Therme Art’s first edition of the Art Senses mentorship programme reflects a growing shift towards artistic practices that extend beyond the visual. Centered on the theme Sensing the Invisible in its inaugural edition, the project brings together artistic practices that engage sensory modalities often underrepresented in the art world.
During the selection process for the Art Senses Artist of the Year 2026, the four jurors—Fatoş Üstek, Tino Sehgal, Jane Withers, and Marc Spiegler—convened in January 2026 in Munich for an intimate roundtable discussion. Together, they explored the recent turn towards multisensory art and the implications of this shift for the future of art institutions and exhibition-making, as well as the role of mentorship for artists creating in this uncharted territory.
Expanding the Fields of Art Practice and Presentation
Counting over 600 applications, the scale and diversity of submissions for the Art Senses Artist of the Year 2026 open call point to a widespread interest in multisensory artistic experimentation. Such practices are no longer marginal but are increasingly central to contemporary artistic inquiry. At the same time, as Withers observes, some of the most interesting proposals that “messed with the senses” emerge at the edges of established disciplines. They exist outside traditional institutional frameworks, appearing in public spaces or embedded in everyday environments.
Spiegler situates this shift within a broader expansion of artistic production, noting how applicants who work outside of painting and sculpture—the dominance of which is closely tied to art market dynamics—also frequently explore disciplines outside of art. In doing so, they are not only redefining how art is created but also challenging assumptions about how art engages the senses, whether through translation into visual form or through fully immersive experiences.
Institutions have been slower to adapt to the rise of sensory art, Sehgal notes, as they continue to operate within a largely modernist paradigm. Audiences may be increasingly curious about what lies beyond the visual, but the infrastructures of exhibition-making are still tied to practical constraints and entrenched habits. Üstek frames this as a broader institutional inertia. While artists are actively engaging multiple senses or involving a “polyphony of mediums and resources”, institutions often lack the technical capacity and narrative frameworks to support such practices. They also require a rethinking of established protocols that would enable different ways of presenting, activating, and engaging with the work.
Reclaiming the Senses
Underlying these developments is a deeper reconsideration of the role of the senses in shaping human experience. Sehgal situates this within a longer historical trajectory, noting that institutions in the Northwestern hemisphere have privileged vision as part of a broader emphasis on rationality. Museums and theatres became “viewing machines”, reinforcing the subject-object divide. Multisensory practices, by contrast, foreground embodiment and relationality, pointing towards “an urge to arrive at a more complete understanding of what it means to be human”. Environmental concerns further fuel this turn towards the sensory. Withers notes that many of the applicants’ proposals incorporate elements such as temperature, wind, and atmosphere, situating the viewer as part of the natural world rather than presenting it as an object of observation.
This reorientation is particularly significant in the context of contemporary digital culture. As Spiegler observes, the proliferation of smartphones has transformed not only what we see but how we see, compressing spatial awareness and intensifying visual focus at close range. In this environment, art that engages multiple senses—or re-expands the field of vision—offers a means of disrupting habitual modes of attention and creating more immersive forms of experience.
Üstek connects the sensory shift of a “screen-oriented way of living” to broader questions of wellbeing. In a society increasingly shaped by screen-based interaction, encounters with texture, smell, and spatial variation can restore a sense of presence and bodily awareness. Multisensory art has the potential to counteract forms of disembodiment associated with digital life, fostering emotional engagement and shared experience.
Rethinking Relational Approaches
Within this evolving landscape, mentorship takes on renewed significance. As Sehgal reflects, mentorship is often shaped by close, formative relationships that support artistic development. Yet, as Spiegler notes, it is equally a reciprocal learning process. The beauty of generous, unstructured mentorship, he notes, is that “you have an enormous ripple effect without even being conscious of having thrown the stone in the water”. Üstek advocates for a non-hierarchical model and an open framework, emphasising mentorship as a shared space of inquiry and creative exchange. In this sense, mentorship mirrors the dynamics of multisensory practice itself: open-ended, relational, and exploratory.
The rise of multisensory art reflects a return to severed relationships—with our senses, environments, and each other. As evidenced by the received submissions for this year’s Art Senses mentorship programme, there is “a growing understanding of art as a tool—almost as respite, a sanctuary”, as Withers remarks. While institutions have yet to fully accommodate these emerging practices, the momentum behind them suggests that such adaptation is not only necessary but inevitable. As these changes continue to unfold, they may ultimately reshape how art is understood within and beyond the art world.