Deep beneath Reims and Épernay, in the historic crayères where champagne ages in darkness and silence, houses are installing contemporary art that questions climate, terroir, and a 300-year-old industry facing an uncertain future. As part of our book research, I descended into these chalk cellars to investigate why champagne's custodians are turning to artists to articulate anxieties they cannot yet express in words.

From Kerry James Marshall's unapologetic presence at the Royal Academy to William Kentridge's provisional coherence at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2025 has been a year of exhibitions that refuse easy answers. These shows — spanning London's major institutions and smaller galleries, reaching into memory, music, movement and collective resistance — demonstrate how art and spirit remain our engines through fractious times.

Eva Langret has transformed Frieze from a commercial platform into something more ambitious: a civic space where ideas circulate freely across borders and generations. As director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, she's positioning the fair as both laboratory and forum, balancing commercial weight with cultural depth while championing emerging voices and protecting the infrastructures that sustain dialogue in turbulent times.

Decades before Instagram and the selfie, Cindy Sherman was forensically dissecting how we construct identity for the camera. At Hauser & Wirth Menorca, her works from the 1970s to the 2010s reveal an artist who anticipated our image-saturated present with uncanny precision, holding up a mirror to the performative reality of modern life.

Telmo Rodríguez has spent three decades reimagining Rioja through the lens of terroir, village traditions and radical authenticity. At Bodega Lanzaga, the pioneering winemaker rejects commercial convention in favour of small-parcel bottlings that honour centuries-old winemaking culture while charting an entirely original path for Spain's most famous wine region.

From the Gran Chaco region of north-west Argentina, Claudia Alarcón and the Silät collective are transforming ancestral Wichí weaving traditions into a powerful contemporary language. At Cecilia Brunson Projects in London, their intricate textiles made from hand-spun chaguar plant fibres reveal how Indigenous artistic practice can honour the past while charting entirely new futures.