The Barbican has opened a year-long exhibition series exploring the enduring influence of Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures through the lens of contemporary artists. Titled Encounters: Giacometti, the project marks a significant collaboration with the Fondation Giacometti and sees Giacometti’s iconic works placed in direct conversation with newly commissioned pieces by Huma Bhabha, Mona Hatoum, and Lynda Benglis.
The series unfolds across three phases in a newly transformed gallery space on Level 2 of the Barbican Centre, formerly home to the Barbican Brasserie. The intimate setting is designed to create a focused environment for this sculptural dialogue, offering a rare opportunity to view Giacometti’s singular, spindly forms in the company of artists who channel his psychological depth in radically different ways.
Opening the series is Pakistani-American artist Huma Bhabha, whose solo presentation runs from May through August. Known for her haunting, post-apocalyptic figures, Bhabha presents a combination of earlier work and a major new iron sculpture created specifically for the exhibition. Her rough-hewn forms stand in eerie counterpoint to Giacometti’s ethereal figures, both grappling with themes of war, memory, and the fragmentary nature of the human body.
Later in the year, Mona Hatoum (September 2025) and Lynda Benglis (February 2026) will each bring their own sculptural vocabularies into the fold. Hatoum’s politically charged works and Benglis’s visceral, often sensual pieces promise to extend the conversation into themes of domesticity, trauma, eroticism, and humour—revealing the timeless relevance of Giacometti’s existential inquiries.
Rather than a retrospective or homage, Encounters aims to generate fresh perspectives on how artists today engage with the same questions of form, presence, and psychological weight that shaped Giacometti’s practice in the aftermath of war. Across three exhibitions, visitors will witness how the human figure—stretched, distorted, unravelled—continues to serve as a vessel for both personal and collective experience.
This sculptural series is as much about contrast as it is about connection. By placing Giacometti’s quiet intensity alongside contemporary works steeped in disruption and contradiction, the Barbican invites viewers into a rich, cross-generational meditation on vulnerability, resilience, and the ever-shifting boundaries of the self.
