Huma Bhabha
Encounters: Giacometti
8 May—10 August 2025
Barbican Centre, London, UK
From May 2025, the Barbican Centre, London, will partner with Fondation Giacometti, Paris, for a series of three groundbreaking exhibitions taking place over the course of a year. The exhibitions bring together the practices of three contemporary artists known for their originality and ingenuity, alongside historic works by the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966). Staged in a newly established, intimate exhibition space within the Barbican, the series launches on 8 May 2025 with an exhibition by Huma Bhabha, followed by Mona Hatoum on 4 September 2025 and Lynda Benglis in February 2026.
Huma Bhabha's monumental sculptures in this show forge new dialogues with works by 20th century sculptor Alberto Giacometti. The sculptures span nearly a century of art-making, their mediums ranging across plaster, bronze, terracotta, and found objects. Works from across Bhabha’s career are displayed alongside iconic works by Giacometti made mostly in the aftermath of World War II.
Here, the ancient, modern, and contemporary meet, with both artists sharing a longstanding interest in the history of figurative sculpture and the body as a site for the traumas of our times. The gallery becomes a landscape of ghostly figures, speaking to ongoing conflicts in which human life is seen as collateral damage.
On view for free in the Level 2 Foyer are four of Bhabha's monumental sculptures. These gigantic forms represent the ancient and the modern, the human and the non-human, and draw inspiration from 1980s and 1990s horror and fantasy films.