Okuzeka
Art & Art History vocabulary · Contemporary Art

Installation

Meaning in art & art history, with examples

/ˌɪnstəˈleɪʃən/nounCore term

In art & art history, installation means: An artwork made for a particular space, often filling a whole room, which visitors walk into or around and experience with more than just their eyes.

In Turkish: enstalasyon, yerleştirme

How it is used

A central form of contemporary art, also called installation art. Artists create, build or install an installation, using light, sound, video, found objects or the architecture itself. In museums, the word also means the process of putting up a show.

Example sentences

  1. The installation fills the old warehouse with hundreds of hanging lamps.

  2. Installation of the exhibition takes two weeks, so the gallery will be closed.

Common collocations

  • video installation
  • sound installation
  • site-specific installation
  • installation view
  • large-scale installation
  • site-specificMade for one particular place and depending on its history, architecture or surroundings, so that the work would lose its meaning if it were moved.
  • contemporary artThe art of the present time, usually meaning work made from about the 1960s or 1970s to today, often using new media, ideas and ways of exhibiting.
  • mixed mediaThe use of more than one material or technique in a single artwork, such as paint, collage, photographs, fabric and found objects.
  • conceptual artArt in which the idea or concept behind the work matters more than how it looks or how skilfully it is made; it developed mainly in the 1960s and 1970s.

More terms: Contemporary Art

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: