Must-See: Huma Bhabha and Alberto Giacometti Sculpt Survival

This review is part of a series of Must-See shows, in which a writer delivers a snapshot of a current exhibition

An array of corporeal forms, decapitated heads and severed limbs fills the new gallery space on the second floor of London’s Barbican Centre. On display are works by the 20th century Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti and contemporary Pakistani-American artist Huma Bhabha, whose oeuvres have an unexpected affinity in their depictions of the effects of warfare and the fragility of human existence.

The works on display here by Giacometti, created largely in the aftermath of World War II, lay bare the physical and psychological traumas of this moment of existential crisis. Figurine Between Two Houses (1950), for example, portrays a body consumed by anguish, its expressionistic bronze surface, the result of fervid mark-making, detailing a gaunt and withered figure. Yet, despite its apparent insubstantiality, the work has an undeniable aura of resilience: the poised body is captured mid-stride, legs marching onwards. 

Elsewhere, Bhabha’s Scout (2011) comprises a totemic figure grappling with its envelopment by the towering block of foraged cork from which it is carved. Its features – a rudimentary nose and a pair of eyes barely discernible as human – peek out from the coarse column. There is a harrowing beauty in this figure’s imperfections, its surface a mélange of slashes, gouges and colourful flecks of acrylic and oil stick. Similarly to Giacometti, Bhabha contends with the effects of contemporaneous traumas, such as the heightened Islamophobia and retaliation of the so-called war on terror following the events of 9/11. In spite of the conflicted state in which they exist, Bhabha’s figures are not victims; rather, they display an unwavering strength. Scout’s bulky and unyielding body, for instance, pushes against the threat of imminent disintegration as it emerges from the block of cork that both gives it life and consumes it. 

‘Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha’ requires of its audience something more than passive voyeurism. Standing amongst these fragmented bodies, it becomes apparent that we, too, belong amidst the devastation. We, too, are flawed yet resilient figures who have borne witness to the horrors of our age. I left the exhibition troubled by a simple question: Is it of great hope or great despair to be alive in such uncertain times?

‘Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha’ is on view at Barbican Art Gallery, London, until 10 August 

^{Main image: ‘Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha’, 2025, exhibition view. Courtesy: © Barbican Art Gallery; photograph: © Max Creasy}