Walk, don’t run, to see Mona Hatoum’s fascinating new art exhibition at the Barbican

A major exhibition of British-Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum’s work at the Barbican arrives at a timely — and politically charged — moment, when war and migration dominate the headlines.

Born in Lebanon to Palestinian parents exiled from their homeland, Hatoum herself was exiled in London by war in the 1970s. Her works will be displayed in the Barbican’s new Level 2 gallery, in dialogue with those of Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, a titan of 20th-century art whose gaunt figures became emblematic of post-war trauma.

The artists are from different eras — Hatoum was born in 1952, while Giacometti died in 1966 — and the pieces in the exhibition span nearly a century. Hatoum will be presenting pieces from across her career, including some never previously shown in the UK. Many continue her mission of shining a light on political instability and ongoing conflict, investigating its impact on people, communities and the home, often by modifying and warping ready-made household objects into strange and uncanny things.

Giacometti’s work is similarly confrontational. Visitors will immediately encounter his 1932 work, Woman With Her Throat Cut, a disquieting tone amplified by other sculptures: skeletal figures, cages, ruined furniture and a cell-like room.

The pair’s interest in how trauma manifests in the body culminates in a final group of works visualising the long half-life of war. VJ

From September 3 to January 11 next year