Credits: clockwise: Sophia Stel by Mikaela Kautzky; Chanel Beads by Moni Haworth; Shala Miller by Shala Miller; and Ebun Sodipo by Johanne Karlsrud, Courtesy of Bergen Kunsthall.
Serpentine is thrilled to announce the return of Park Nights, its experimental, interdisciplinary, live programme sited within the annual architectural commission, the 25th Serpentine Pavilion designed by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, LANZA atelier.
Bringing together multi-disciplinary artists, and featuring pop music, performance installations, and poetry, the exciting live programme will invite audiences to come together, reflect, and engage. Park Nights runs from July to October.
Image credit: Sophia Stel. Photo: Scarlet Ross
Sophia Stel Friday 10 July 2026, 8pm
This year’s Park Nights season opens with I feel amazing, a bespoke performance by Vancouver-based musician Sophia Stel. Drawing on her latest EP, How to Win At Solitaire (2025) and exclusive selections from her upcoming album, Stel brings her genre-spanning sound to the Serpentine Pavilion, weaving together synthesisers, digital drums and the electric guitar in a set that traverses alt-pop and indie rock.
I feel amazing is presented in collaboration with Stone Island Sound.
Chanel Beads. Photo: Moni Haworth
Chanel Beads Friday 17 July 2026, 8pm
Continuing throughout July, Park Nights present a live set by Chanel Beads with vocal and guitar interludes. Transforming LANZA atelier’s Serpentine Pavilion into a stage for underground pop, the performance marks the release of their second album, Your Day Will Come (2026), which uses dream logic to delve into liminality and precarious remembrance.
Your Day Will Come is presented in collaboration with Stone Island Sound.
Ebun Sodipo, Transatlantic Cruises – with Chloe Filani, 2022 at Arebyte Gallery. Courtesy of Arebyte Gallery, Photo: Max Colson
Ebun Sodipo Friday 25 September 2026, 8pm
In September, visual artist and writer Ebun Sodipo presents Atlantic Cruises: The Sex Tour, a new iteration of her ongoing performance series rooted in Black feminist study. Speculating on the drives behind attacks and failures experienced by Black, trans, and queer communities, Sodipo’s polyphonic audio-visual conversation maps new languages and tools to speak about the body and the past for Black trans people of the future.
Ebun Sodipo’s work is featured in the Serpentine Reader, Issue 02: I Hope This Finds You Well. Her Park Nights performance continues ideas explored in her essay, I Guess I Gotta Help Myself.
The season concludes in October with a new commission from visual artist, writer and musician Shala Miller, presenting her work in the UK for the first time. Creating harmony and disharmony through improvised vocal and string experiments, her new commission will echo throughout the Serpentine Pavilion 2026 a serpentine by LANZA atelier.
NOTES TO EDITORS
Park Nights
Each year, Park Nights presents a series of live performance commissions in Serpentine’s annual architectural commission, the Serpentine Pavilion which becomes the stage for interdisciplinary artistic interventions on selected evenings this summer and autumn.
Since 2002, Park Nights has presented new works across art, music, film, theatre, dance, literature, philosophy, fashion, and technology. Each year the commissions respond to the new Pavilion design, offering audiences unique ways to experience architecture and performance. The programme has supported emerging artists and pioneering writers and thinkers from around the world.
Previous programming has featured artists, poets, and thinkers from around the world including Etel Adnan, Eleanor Antin, Meriem Bennani, Black Quantum Futurism, Shawanda Corbett, Rhea Dillon, John Glacier, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Joseph Grigely, Tamara Henderson, Dorothy Iannone, Arthur Jafa, Klein, Alexander Kluge, Linton Kwesi-Johnson, Lina Lapelyte, Mica Levi, Carrie Mae Weems, Oscar Murillo, Fred Moten together with Eileen Myles and Adam Phillips, Precious Okoyomon, Sondra Perry, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Pedro Reyes, James Richards, TELFAR, Leslie Thornton, Wolfgang Tillmans, Marianna Simnett, Standing on the Corner Art Ensemble, Kamasi Washington, Ai Weiwei, among many others.
Serpentine Park Nights 2026 is curated by Claude Adjil, Curator at Large, with Liz Stumpf, Assistant Curator.
Serpentine Pavilion
The 25th Pavilion is designed by Mexico City-based architecture studio LANZA atelier, founded by Isabel Abascal and Alessandro Arienzo, and on view until 25th October 2026.
The Pavilion is anchored on the English architectural feature known as a serpentine, or crinkle-crankle, wall which derives its stability from its curving form, requiring fewer bricks than a straight wall. The name, a serpentine, is inspired by this feature, which makes up the Pavilion’s south wall and subtly references the nearby Serpentine Lake, whose gentle curve evokes the form of a serpent. a serpentine is constructed from a rhythmic repetition of brick columns that transform the wall from opaque to permeable. In this way, the structure challenges the wall as a feature of division and instead creates moments of connection, allowing visitors to see through to the other side. The architects hope visitors will interact freely with the space: ‘There is no fixed place to sit or look. It’s designed for people to move, gather and create their own experience.’
Artists
Sophia Stel (b. 1998, Victoria, Canada) is a Vancouver-based musician and producer. Her debut EP, Object Permanence (2024), was widely celebrated for its genre-spanning sound and originality. Her second EP, How to Win At Solitaire (2025), is defined by its use of synthesiser, electric guitar, digital drums and Stel’s whimsical vocals. Blending the ethos of underground culture with the lyricism of indie rock, Sophia Stel is the voice of the post-internet generation. 2025 marked her first headline tour, which included a performance at the Pitchfork Music Festival Paris. In 2026, Stel performed at internationally acclaimed music venues, including Berghain / Kantine, Berlin, DE; Fabric, London, UK; and festivals such as End of the Road Festival, UK (forthcoming); and Primavera Sound, Buenos Aires, AR (forthcoming).
Chanel Beads (b. 1994 in Minnesota, US) is the stage name of New York-based underground pop musician Shane Lavers. Mixing electronic sounds and acoustic instruments, Lavers’ ever-evolving songs escape the constraints of set genres. They are portraits of online communities and uncanny intimacy. Fragmented lyrics composed of open-ended questions, voice memos and online channels, blend with soft melodic vocals, string instruments and distorted canned sounds. His second album, Your Day Will Come (2026), follows the identically titled debut released in 2025. It uses dream logic to delve into liminality and precarious remembrance, reflecting on the nuances of loss and with the feeling of being trapped in old habits. Shane Lavers opened for Lorde on her recent Ultrasound North American tour.
Shala Miller (b. 1993, Cleveland, US) is an artist based in New York City working across photography, printmaking, video, writing, performance, and music. Her practice grapples with a search for self, internal tension and bodily memory. Recent exhibitions include the 59th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, US (2026); MMK Frankfurt, DE (2025-26); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, US (2025); International Center of Photography, New York, US (2025); and CPW, Kingston, US (2025). Her performances have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, US (2024); Artist’s Space, New York, US (2023); Performance Space New York, US (2021); among others. Miller’s artist book Tender Noted (2022) was included in MoMA’s list of ‘10 Favourite Photo Books of 2022’. Her artwork is in the collections of MoMA, New York, US; the Studio Museum in Harlem, US; the Hessel Museum, Hudson, US; the Akeroyd Collection; and lumber room, Portland, US; among others. Ebun Sodipo (b. 1993, London, UK) is an artist and writer based in London whose work is guided by Black feminist study and spans sound, performance, text, installation, video, and sculpture. Using collage and fabulation, she explores real and imagined narratives of Black trans women’s presence, embodiment, and interiority across the past, present and future. In doing this, Sodipo fills in historical gaps to create moments of archival pleasure for Black trans people. Sodipo’s work has been presented at Frieze London, Cubitt, 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, Narrative Projects, Raven Row, The Block Museum of Art, SHOWStudio, South London Gallery, Arcadia Missa’s ‘How To Sleep Faster,’ Auto Italia, Institute for Contemporary Arts, Tate Britain, Texte zur Kunst, Bergen Kunsthall, Wasafiri, Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts, and Camden Arts Centre.
About Serpentine
Building new connections between artists and audiences, Serpentine, led by Bettina Korek, CEO and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, presents pioneering contemporary art exhibitions and cultural events with a legacy that stretches back over half a century, from a wide range of emerging practitioners to the most internationally recognised artists, writers, scientists, thinkers, and cultural thought leaders of our time.
Based in London’s Kensington Gardens, Serpentine features a year-round, free programme of exhibitions, architectural showcases, education, live events and technological activations across two sites, Serpentine North and Serpentine South, in the park and beyond the gallery walls.
Public art has emerged as a central strand of Serpentine’s programme. Major presentations include a collection of Eduardo Paolozzi’s sculptures (1987); Anish Kapoor’s Turning the World Upside Down (2010); Lee Ufan’s Relatum – Stage (2018–19); Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s London Mastaba in the Serpentine Lake (2018); I LOVE YOU EARTH by Yoko Ono (2021); Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s Inremembrance of the coming alien (Alienor)(2022); Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg’s Pollinator Pathmaker (2022–24); Atta Kwami's DzidzƆ kple amenuveve (Joy and Grace) (2021-22); Gerhard Richter’s STRIP-TOWER (2024); Yayoi Kusama’s Pumpkin at the Round Pond (2024); Esther Mahlangu’s mural Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (2024); Giuseppe Penone’s Albero folgorato (Thunderstruck Tree) (2012) and Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone), (2010 – 2024), in 2025-26, David Hockney’s mural A Year in Normandie (Detail, 2020-21) in 2026, and Jesús Rafael SOTO's Pénétrable BBL Jaune (1999; 2023 Edition) in 2026.
Proud to maintain free access for all visitors, Serpentine also reaches an exceptionally broad audience and maintains a profound connection with its local community.
About Stone Island Sound
Stone Island Sound is the evolving music-oriented project that embraces Stone Island’s ongoing commitment to contemporary culture. Built on the brand’s mantra of “Community as a Form of Research,” it reflects Stone Island’s deep cultural roots and the brand’s embrace of its community from all walks of life.
Stone Island Sound is available to stream via Apple Music and Spotify.
Stone Island Sound Live is available exclusively on Apple Music, with specific sets recorded in Spatial Audio.
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