In the three-part Encounter series curated by the Barbican Centre and the Fondation Giacometti, works by the late Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti (1901-66) are placed in successive individual conversations with contemporary women artists. The recently concluded first part was with Pakistani-American artist Huma Bhabha. The second, previewed in early September, is a dialogue between the renowned modern sculptor and British-Palestinian multimedia and installation artist Mona Hatoum (b. 1952). While Giacometti is known for his figurative sculpture and Hatoum for her object-based installations, both are united in their profound engagement with the effects of conflict on the human body and psyche.

Giacometti observed a world rebuilding after catastrophe; Hatoum navigates a world simultaneously at war and at peace, in which global surveillance and media saturation make every conflict inescapable.

Giacometti lived through both World Wars, while Hatoum’s world is shaped by decades of conflict and ongoing violence in Palestine, where her cultural roots lie. The works by Giacometti on display, made between the 1930s and 1950s, showcase some of his most brutal creations. The exhibition opens with Woman with Her Throat Cut (1932), a low-lying bronze sculpture that fuses the female form with that of an insect. With splayed limbs, an arched torso and spherical breast-like protrusions, the figure references sexual violence and bodily destruction.

Hatoum flanks this with two powerful works. The first, Incommunicado (1993), is an infant’s cot, crafted in steel, its bedding replaced with chicken wire, thus turning an object of care into a site of pain. The second, A Bigger Splash (2009), consists of six blood-red Murano glass droplets frozen in the moment of splashing, shaped like coronets, arranged on the floor. The title references David Hockney, subverting his sunlit hedonism with haunting stillness – offering a still counterpoint to Giacometti’s anguished figure.

Giacometti experimented with the motif of the cage or a frame in this period and across several works. In the bronze sculptures The Cage (1950-51) and Figurine Between Two Houses (1950), his signature elongated minimal figures are placed between vertical and horizontal structures, respectively, lending a sense of theatricality to otherwise commonplace forms - a bust or a woman walking. Hatoum has long used the grid to evoke similar tensions. In Cube (2006), a life-sized metal structure of interwoven bars mimics a prison cell, while Mirror (2025), a wall-mounted piece resembling barred windows, reflects themes of surveillance and confinement. Suspended within the Cube is Giacometti’s The Nose (1947), made by the artist after he witnessed two deaths, which he described visually as the nose becoming increasingly ‘prominent’ and a mouth that ‘barely breathed’. The Nose is a macabre recreation of this observation with an exaggeratedly long, thin, pointed nose, a gaping mouth and hollowed eye sockets in a round head atop an oblong neck.

The walking figure became central to Giacometti’s postwar work, symbolising perseverance amid ruin. Nearby is documentation of Hatoum’s performance in Brixton, South London, Roadworks (1985). The footage, shown on an old box television, focuses on her bare feet dragging a pair of black Doc Martens boots and responds to the race tensions and police violence in 1980s Britain.

Though shaped by different eras, both artists are deeply attuned to their surroundings. Giacometti observed a world rebuilding after catastrophe; Hatoum navigates a world simultaneously at war and at peace, in which global surveillance and media saturation make every conflict inescapable. Though their lives overlapped by 14 years, Hatoum’s era is defined by the near-total collapse of spatial and emotional distance to war, brought about by the pervasive reach of global media, through which violence is rendered immediately visible and experienced locally as it unfolds remotely.

Three of Hatoum’s globe-based works powerfully reframe this reality. Orbital (2018) resembles a spherical molecular structure built from concrete connectors and steel bars; Inside Out (2019) is a solid globe of rope-like entrails; and Hot Spot (2018) resembles an atlas and outlines continents in red neon, rendering the entire Earth as one continuous conflict zone. The absence of specific “hot spots” suggests war is no longer contained—it is endemic.

Yet war as spectacle is nothing without its human toll. In Beirut (major) (2022), Hatoum delicately renders on translucent paper the city’s areas devastated by the 2020 port explosion. Caused by state negligence, the blast killed over 200 people and injured 7,000. The fragility of the medium starkly contrasts with the violence of the event, exposing the chasm between systemic indifference and the unbearable vulnerability of life.

In Encounter, Hatoum and Giacometti are co-commentators on the enduring realities of violence, displacement and vulnerability. Though separated by time, geography and medium, their works converge in a shared attunement to the corporeal and psychological impact of conflict. They remind us that violence is never merely an abstract or distant concept—it is lived, embodied and persistently inscribed on the human form and psyche.

‘Encounters: Giacometti’ is on view at the Barbican Centre from September 3 - January 11, 2026.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position of STIR or its editors.