Frieze London's Artist Award Goes to a Giant Spider You Can Climb

Frieze London 2026 has a monstrous spider, and visitors are allowed to climb it. Athens-based artist Theo Triantafyllidis has won the 2026 Frieze London Artist Award, and his commission, 'Feral Metaverse (Spider)', will be presented within the fair's Focus section, in The Regent's Park from 14 to 18 October 2026. Forma, which co-produced it, places the booth 'in the heart of the fair's Focus section'.

The sculpture is only half the work. The climbable physical structure acts as an entry point into a shared digital environment — a multiplayer game in which players must cooperate to move, connect and form temporary group bodies: towers, wheels, group hugs, spiders. Forma says the piece turns the booth 'from a place of observation into one of active participation'. Triantafyllidis trained as an architect, and his practice sits exactly on this seam, combining performance and installation with gaming and VR.

Players cooperate to form temporary group bodies — towers, wheels, group hugs, spiders — inside a game you enter by climbing the sculpture.

The award, now in its eleventh year, has shifted shape. Supported for the first time by Google Arts & Culture, this year it invited an artist to explore advanced technologies, AI included, as a tool and collaborator. It is co-commissioned and co-produced with Forma, a contemporary arts organisation based in Southwark, London.

The scale of the fairs, as FAD Magazine counts it: 318 galleries across Frieze London and Frieze Masters, with 176 at Frieze London, from 43 countries and regions, and 142 from 33 countries at Frieze Masters. Focus itself has 35 galleries from 17 countries, all no more than 12 years old. This year one booth in Focus is an eight-legged video game. The Regent's Park, 14–18 October 2026.

Frieze London opened on Wednesday 14 October; the fair's opening-week post has the sections, the galleries and what is showing across London.