His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, in such institutions as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the Vienna Secession, the Serpentine Gallery in London and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. He participated in the Whitney Biennial 1997 and 2000 and earned the International Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1999 for the installation Electric earth. Aitken’s Sleepwalkers exhibition at MoMA in 2007 transformed an entire block of Manhattan into an expansive cinematic experience as he covered the museum’s exteriors walls with projections. In 2009, his Sonic Pavilion opened to the public in the forested hills of Brazil at the new cultural foundation INHOTIM. Aitken’s multiform artwork Black Mirror engaged a site-specific multi-channel video installation and a live theatre performance on a uniquely designed barge floating off Athens and Hydra Island, Greece.
In 2012, with the presentation of his video work Song1 on the circular façade of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C., spring 2012, Aitken proved once more his ability to identify and explore the possibilities for using almost anything as a projection surface. The video installation, visible and above all audible from afar, used the museum’s special architecture to suggest a unique, timeless loop of partly fragmented, partly overlapping moving images. This work is currently showcased at the gallery Eva Presenhuber in Zurich, Switzerland (from September 1 to October 20, 2012). Also in autumn 2012, Aitken’s first public realm installation entitled The Source is to be launched in the UK at Tate Liverpool, as part of the Liverpool Biennale 2012. From 15 September 2012 – 13 January 2013, The Source will showcase the artist’s pioneering approach to public art.