Immersive and Interactive: Exploring the Two Main Areas of teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi

teamLab Phenomena Abu Dhabi is the newest place in Abu Dhabi that turns simple curiosity into pure delight. Light, sound, and movement surround you in every artwork, immersing you in a world that feels alive and welcoming. 

This unique multi-sensory art experience is carefully designed to spark imagination and make you feel like you are part of the artwork, not just a visitor passing through. The pieces shift with every step, so the experience becomes personal rather than something you just watch. It invites you to slow down, explore at your own pace, and enjoy the surprise of each room.

You can experience all these at teamLab Phenomena’s unique venues, which are divided into Dry and Wet Areas.

Dry Areas

teamLab Phenomena’s Dry Area houses artworks that respond to your movements. You’ll be immersed in spectacular light, sound, and motion-based experiences without getting wet.

Below are some of the exhibits you can find in this area:

1. Morphing Continuum

This room is designed with mirrored walls, wind currents, and other state-of-the-art elements that shape thousands of silver balloons into tall twisters that disintegrate, scatter, and reform when you move through them.

The exhibit is billed as a High Order Sculpture, as the artwork can’t be separated from changes in the space.

2. Levitation Void

In this exhibit, an enormous black sphere rises and falls in the center of the room, which is covered in red light. The orb moves according to the space’s atmospheric conditions – it rises and falls faster as more people enter the gallery.

This moving “black hole” represents the order of energy being born and sustained by its environment. This order of energy also gives life to a new existence.

Additionally, this order of energy is flexible and soft, which means it can repair itself as long as its environment is well-maintained.

3. Spontaneous Order in Chaos

In this exhibit, different colors envelop you as you move within the space. The colors interact dynamically and organically, creating spontaneous yet artistic patterns.

Your movements create the patterns, allowing you to be part of the artwork and an incredible visual experience you won’t find anywhere else.

The exhibit signifies the relationship between order and disorder, which flow into one another endlessly.

4. Light Vortex

This exhibit features beams of gleaming light swirling around you, immersing you in a mesmerizing illusion of a cosmic whirlpool. The overlapping lights form distinct shapes and patterns, creating an interactive environment that blends motion and color.

In Light Vortex, you’ll understand that even if the elements of an artwork are separated in space and time, they can still be recognized as a single entity and create order and beauty.

5. Light Sculpture – Flow

This artwork features captivating streams of light swirling and surging around you, representing the elegant energy and beauty of ocean vortices. Here, you'll see eye-catching, dynamic sculptures formed by flowing illumination.

Your senses will awaken in this enthralling artwork as you feel the boundaries between you, light, and space fade.

Wet Area

This sensory space features interactive artworks that revolve around and involve water. Prepare to wade through shallow pools to experience otherworldly experiences that blend water, light, and sound.  

Here are some of the exhibits in this area:

1. Floating Microcosms

This series from the 2009 teamLabBall features soft, flexible sculptures called Ovoids that respond to your movements and change the relationship between guests and the space. These sculptures move freely as they do not adhere to any boundaries.  

When a person or wave pushes an Ovoid, it falls and then rises back, releasing a reverberating tone. The surrounding Ovoids respond, releasing color and producing a resonating sound.

It has several viewpoints installed across the space, allowing you and the other guests to be part of each other’s artwork.

2. The Accumulation of Time

Walk across a pool with colorful shapes and patterns that represent the changes in the shape of the land as time progresses. As you explore the space, water covers the land, blurring the boundaries between the guests’ movement and the artwork.

The artwork links your presence with that of the other guests, turning the whole experience into one continuous way of sensing the world.

3. Waterfall of Light Particles

Waterfall of Light Particles is a series of artworks inspired by a real waterfall in the mountains of Shikoku. It was shown in the earlier work Waterfall of Light Particles Deep in the Mountains of Shikoku, from 2016 to 2017.

In this artwork, shining particles fall in streams and leave soft trails of light afterimages that look like lines in the air. As these traces overlap, they create a waterfall made entirely of light.

4. Continuous Trajectories in Flux and Form

This exhibit is a continuously changing artwork where lines of light behave like living pathways. They move and flow to create patterns that do not repeat and images that present ongoing motion, as if watching energy travel through space.

The artwork highlights how everything is shaped by continuous change, and it invites you to slow down and watch these transformations unfold.

You can be part of all these immersive and interactive artworks when you visit Saadiyat Island’s newest art house.

Before visiting, read the teamLab Phenomena visitor guidelines to understand their policies on photography, visiting with children, and more, so you can have a fun and memorable visit here.