London
Mona Hatoum first became aware of Alberto Giacometti in the early 1980s, through the writings of French philosopher Georges Bataille. By uniting the two artists, this deftly curated exhibition (the second in the ongoing “Encounters: Giacometti” series, on view through January 11, 2026) sets out to explore the concerns of a perennially troubled world. With sculptures in plaster, bronze, steel, and glass, alongside installations, videos, and works on paper, it follows a period of research that Hatoum undertook at the Fondation Giacometti. Navigating through the various works, visitors discover gaunt figures, oppressive cages, incinerated furniture, and cell-like enclosures at strategic points in their journey, making for an immersive and thought-provoking experience.
The Barbican’s new gallery space is of domestic proportions, well-suited to Hatoum’s Interior Landscape (2008) and Remains of the Day (2016–18)—room-size installations of domestic furniture altered to become sources of dread. Divide (2025), a three-panel medical screen on wheels, cleaves the space, while still allowing a view through its barbed wire grid. In selecting works for the show, Hatoum prioritized cages, a recurring motif for both artists. She, of course, wanted to include The Nose (1947), an iconic work often tied to mid-20th-century existential angst. With the permission of the Fondation Giacometti, she removed the sculpture from its cage and hung it inside her Cube (2006). Because the cage in Cube is larger, The Nose’s expression of excruciating horror appears amplified, while its form, incarcerated behind wrought iron bars, becomes diminished and helpless.
Hatoum’s Untitled (cage) (2025) uses steel bars to create an outline, in much the same way that Giacometti delineates space. Two contrasting elements—a hand-blown glass form and the surrounding rebar cage—conjure a feeling of psychological entrapment or enforced compliance. The red glass, suggestive of bodily organs or blood cells, continues Hatoum’s ongoing concern with the effects of confinement on the body. Untitled (cage), roughly the size of a human head, is located close to Giacometti’s Head Skull (1934), which reimagines the human skull in sharp, flat planes, establishing a formal and emotional link between two works created over 90 years apart.
Roadworks (1985), an early video of Hatoum walking barefoot, dragging a pair of Doc Martens, references a period of police presence in Brixton, London. Its action and mood mirror Giacometti’s walking figures, like Figurine Between Two Houses (1950), an isolated female figure flanked by urban buildings. The sculpture’s placement near a window is ingenious; the viewer does not merely look at it, but through it to London’s cityscape beyond. Such juxtapositions offer a continuing spatial dialogue, in that the gallery, sliced by a matrix of horizontal and vertical bars, simultaneously conceals and reveals glimpses of the works.
Giacometti’s Woman with Her Throat Cut (1932), a devastatingly splayed form, resonates with Hatoum’s Untitled (meat grinder) (2005), a bronze cast of a kitchen utensil that evokes an implement of torture. Hatoum has recalled a similar utensil in her mother’s kitchen, which she regarded with dread as a child, because the minced meat forced through its grinding plate resembled flesh. Despite the formal and psychological resonances between the two works, Hatoum resists the depiction of blatant violence. Instead, her work generates an undercurrent of unease, encouraging visitors to establish their own associations. Viewers forgo their role as passive onlookers, and become complicit in some way, as flawed as the objects and figures they observe.
Hatoum’s deployment of geometry and abstraction transcends the specific, yet the threat of violence is always close at hand. Threat can take many forms, depending on individual context, and Hatoum’s practice offers a space in which to reflect and explore the possibilities. Her installations are devoid of occupants, so viewers complete the narrative, while in Giacometti’s work, figures are usually present. Giacometti’s central themes of suffering, anxiety, and fear are more relevant than ever. It is as if his striding, alienated figures were a premonition of what was to come, not only an acknowledgement of what had been. They signify humanity’s fallibility, our predisposition to repeat social and political destruction without growing any wiser in the process. Together, Giacometti and Hatoum forge a haunting duet across time.
