EAF26

EAF26 presents alternative perspectives across the breadth of the city. Register for EAF26 Accreditation for arts professionals, press and colleagues working in the sector here.

At EAF’s new permanent space at 92 Constitution Street, Love Bites Back is an exhibition of work by Del LaGrace Volcano drawn from their Queer Archive of Resistance, focusing on photographs made in the UK, including Edinburgh, between 1980s and 90s. Emerging from lived involvement in leather dyke culture, embodied politics and queer identity, these images challenge normative ideas of gender, desire, and power. A sister show at Auto Italia in London, Sensual / Mutual, returns to the early 1980s and to the queer subcultural spaces that both sheltered and shaped Volcano’s Practice. 

At Custom Lane, Carnal Desires is a rare exhibition of work by Sadao Hasegawa, revealing the under-recognised and largely unseen work of one of post-war Japan’s most influential gay fetish artists. Celebrated for his depiction of hypermasculine forms, Hasegawa’s paintings blend eroticism with pan-Asian folklore, science fiction, and popular culture, imagining a universe where chiseled men encounter mythic creatures, hybrid animals, and divine bodies unbound by earthly limits. Also at Custom Lane, for the first time, Ellis Jackson Kroese of Trans Masc Studies presents History is a Home, a research collection of alternative trans artefacts, a curated selection of publications and a dedicated workspace for visitors’ own use, situating queer history as a place of belonging and connection. Across the Shore, audiences can also find EAF’s welcome space in Browns of Leith. 

On Calton Hill, a monumental sculptural commission—Guardian—by Emii Alrai with fabrication from George Brown & Sons. Guardian explores the cultural power and contested political histories of archaeological ruins in dialogue with the unfinished National Monument of Scotland, known as “Edinburgh’s Disgrace”. Tell Me About It: Hard Labour brings a human library event to Edinburgh this August, created in partnership with Scotland for Decrim and part of a wider project with Arika. Later in the year, this will extend into a billboard series stretching across the city with BUILDHOLLYWOOD Scotland, transforming public space into a site of reflection and solidarity, and making visible sex workers' histories, voices, and creative practices.

EAF has partnered with Falastin Film Festival bringing a dedicated focus on Palestinian and Lebanese artists and filmmakers. Palestinian Sound Archive, led by artist Mo’min Swaitat, brings its celebration of music, spoken word and album artwork from historic Palestine to a festival-long installation at the Palestine Museum. 

EAF also includes three weekends of performance. Caught Hold of Nothing offers a glimpse into a performance work in progress by Magnus Westwell, which will be presented in full at EAF27. In this intimate duet, performed with Océane Robin, Westwell plays live violin to exhaustion, building layered environments in which the body moves through emotional states toward catharsis. To launch the new co-commissioned residency with Pinacoteca de São Paolo, EAF will present a new performance by artist Davi Pontes and Sebastião Abreu, Serial Component, continuing to spark conversations around human connections to nature, creating connections between Scotland and Brazil. 

Closing the festival is Zifzafa, a sound performance by Lawrence Abu Hamdan. Zifzafa is the Arabic word describing a wind that shakes everything in its path, the performance centres on the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights, where 30 planned wind turbines will flood the region with a relentless mechanical roar. Framed as a “green” energy project, the turbines weaponise sound itself, unsettling and exhausting local life. The performance is programmed in collaboration with Falastin Film Festival, and accompanied by an exhibition at The Common Guild in Glasgow.

EAF26 focuses on archives and photography including the largest ever presentation of photography by Sandra George at City Art Centre in partnership with Craigmillar Now. She devoted her life to working with communities, documenting and developing vital social-action projects in Edinburgh for over thirty years, from the 1980s onwards. Craigmillar Now presents A Magic Lantern, a powerful and sensitive photography exhibition from Niddrie photographer and former community worker Lee McCormack. Lee’s personal, joyful images capture pioneering art and community projects across Scotland between the late 1970s to the early 2000s. Among People at Stills is a major survey of internationally renowned documentary and portrait photographer Jillian Edelstein. Wendy McMurdo: The Digital Mirror at National Galleries Scotland: Portrait charts 20 years of McMurdo’s photographic reflections on childhood, the digital world, learning and make-believe. The National Galleries of Scotland at the Royal Scottish Academy Building is hosting Catherine Opie: To Be Seen, the first major museum exhibition of Opie’s work to be shown in Scotland. 

Jupiter Rising x EAF will be guest-curated by Sgàire Wood, who will also present a new solo exhibition In Pride, In Piety, In Vigilance at Jupiter Artland. This evening of experimental performance and music in the woodlands of Jupiter Artland includes performances from junglehussi, Princessa Magione III, Plantainchipps and Poisonous Relationship. 

Sculptures made by leading artists such as Anne Hardy and Eva Rothschild will be on display at the Talbot Rice Gallery and Fruitmarket. Nearby at City Art Centre, Rachel McBrinn + Jonathan Webb present Study for North Bridge.

At Edinburgh Printmakers, Memorials to Sausage Politics is a new exhibition by Jamie Fitzpatrick that explores the divisive debate around post-colonial public statuary. At Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Esther Castle's Abundant Parts is a newly commissioned installation and other-worldly garden. Meanwhile, in the Beacon Tower, Kate Power’s new sound installation foregrounds listening as a bodily practice. 

Collective present Katie Paterson’s Afterlife, a sculptural installation originally commissioned for the Folkestone Triennial in 2025 and a new solo commission by former EAF23 PLATFORM artist Richard Maguire, and the first exhibition in the gallery’s Time + Space early-career artist programme. At Ingleby, Songs of Innocence & Experience, part II, is an exhibition dedicated to celebrating the Caribbean artist Frank Walter. 

Press information: Nicola Jeffs, nj@nicolajeffs.com / +44 7794 694 754.

EAF (Edinburgh Art Festival) is the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art. Founded in 2004, we work with local and international partners to present an ambitious and meaningful programme of exhibitions, events and projects across the city.