Giant climbable spider with video game lands at Frieze London
Visitors to Frieze London can climb onto a giant six-legged spider. The work is not only a sculpture to look at. It also holds a video game where players travel across a fantastical world to escape a giant spider. It is built for touching, climbing and playing together.
The artist is Theo Triantafyllidis, a Greek artist based in Athens. He is the 2026 Frieze London Artist Award winner, according to Frieze. The award enabled him to create a new work for the fair. That new work is the spider.
The piece is titled Feral Metaverse (Spider) (2026). It was commissioned for the Frieze London Artist Award 2026, Frieze said. A commission is a new work made for a particular place or occasion. Here, the occasion is the fair itself. The result is described as a participatory sculpture, which means visitors are meant to get on it and interact with it, not just walk past it.
Its form is a giant arachnid, the animal group that includes spiders, with six legs. Fair visitors are invited to climb onto the giant structure. The climb leads into a collaborative multiplayer video game. Multiplayer simply means several people play together at the same time. In this game, players work together to traverse, or travel across, a fantastical world to escape a giant spider, according to The Art Newspaper.
The work is being presented at Frieze London, the contemporary art fair organised in The Regent's Park in London. This year's edition runs from 14 to 18 October 2026, Frieze announced. That puts the climbable spider inside the fairgrounds for the full run of the event. Visitors encounter it alongside the fair's gallery stands and displays.
For visitors, this means comfortable shoes may matter more than art knowledge. You do not need to know the backstory to climb on or play. You just need to be ready to join in. It is art as playground and game board in one.
