Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha, Barbican, exhibition review: ‘A temporal and cultural journey’
Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha, installation view. Copyright: Max Creasy / Barbican Art Gallery
The Barbican’s new exhibition, Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha, is the first in a series of three shows that bring the work of Alberto Giacometti face-to-face with contemporary counterparts.
The artistic triptych is to figure selections from the oeuvre of the iconic 20th-century Swiss sculptor alongside those of Pakistani-American Huma Bhabha through August, followed by Mona Hatoum in September and Lynda Benglis in February 2026.
The current exhibition occupies the cultural centre’s new Level 2 space, a road-like gallery that is an especially appropriate venue for the collection assembled for the pairing of Giacometti and Bhabha.
The sculptures on display are fashioned out of a wide range of media – plaster, bronze, terracotta, cork, cast iron and found objects.
Alberto Giacometti in the studio. Photograph: Michel Sima. Copyright: Succession Alberto Giacometti / Adagp, Paris 2024
Predominantly explorations of the human form, these semi-abstract depictions of bodies and body parts invite you to reflect on how people engage with their environment.
Bhabha’s eclectic artworks resonate with Giacometti’s figures, but reach beyond into darker territory with themes of death, fragmentation, trauma and horror.
Charting a temporal and cultural journey, Encounters engages thoughtfully with what we are made of.
Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha runs until 10 August at Level 2, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS.