--- title: "Exhibition Making LUMA Arles Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives Chapter 6 Zaha Hadid" description: "Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives Chapter 6: Zaha Hadid, I Think There Should Be No End to Experimentation, LUMA Arles, 01.05.2026—31.03.2027." canonical: https://arthurfouray.systems/exhibition-making-luma-arles-hans-ulrich-obrist-archives-chapter-6-zaha-hadid type: ExhibitionEvent year: 2026 updated: "2026-09-26T22:46:59+00:00" license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ --- # Exhibition Making LUMA Arles Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives Chapter 6 Zaha Hadid Exhibition Making LUMA Arles Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives Chapter 6 Zaha Hadid Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives Chapter 6: Zaha Hadid I Think There Should Be No End to Experimentation Iwan Baan Hélène Binet Stefano Boeri Peter Cook Michael Craig-Martin Simone Fattal Lina Ghotmeh Zaha Hadid Susan Hefuna Koo Jeong A Mehdi Moutashar Hashim Sarkis Rirkrit Tiravanija Sumayya Vally Francesco Vezzoli Madelon Vriesendorp & Shumon Basar 01.05.2026—31.03.2027 Artistic direction by Vassilis Oikonomopoulos (Artistic Director, LUMA Arles) Co-curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist (Senior Advisor), Arthur Fouray (Curator and Archivist) in close collaboration with the Zaha Hadid Foundation With the assistance of Lucas Jacques-Witz (Assistant Curator & Archivist) LUMA Arles Living Archives Programme Arles, France https://luma.org/en/arles/whats-on/archives-zaha-hadid Photographs: Victor & Simon , Grégoire d’Ablon ‘I think there should be no end to experimentation’ Zaha Hadid , 2013 The sixth chapter of the Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives marks the tenth anniversary of Dame Zaha Hadid ’s passing (b. 31.10.1950, Baghdad, Iraq – d. 31.03.2016, Miami, Florida). It honours a visionary architect who alters the horizon of contemporary architecture by using abstract painting as a method of spatial invention. Born into a liberal, secular Iraqi family, Hadid studies mathematics at the American University of Beirut before relocating to London to attend the Architectural Association (AA) in 1972. There, in the orbit of Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis , she explores the aborted, unrealised, or insufficiently tested experiments of Modernism and the Russian avant-garde, adopting drawing and abstract painting as investigative structures. Through axonometric projection, multi-perspectival viewpoints, calligraphic line, and acrylic layering, she pushes architecture beyond the inertia of Euclidean geometry long before advanced software can help coordinate such complexity. This exhibition revisits the long conversation between the curator and the legendary architect, which begins in the late 1990s when Obrist invites Hadid to realise Meshworks within the cycle La Ville, le Jardin, la Mémoire [ The City, the Garden, the Memory ] at the Villa Medici in 2000. Across encounters in London, Basel, Munich, and Paris in the early 2000s, that exchange becomes a sustained inquiry into the city, the museum, and the unfinished horizon of twenty-first-century urbanism. Hadid serves as a trustee of the Serpentine from 1996, and she designs its inaugural Pavilion in 2000 upon the invitation of Julia Peyton-Jones . Following Obrist ’s appointment at the Serpentine in 2006, she participates in several of its Marathons, returns with her Lilas installation, inaugurated during the 2007 Summer Party, and later completes the Serpentine North Gallery and The Magazine, its restaurant (2009–2013). After nearly two decades at the AA, Hadid finds in the Serpentine a new platform for public experimentation. This long engagement is central to understanding her public life, since it is one of the places where architecture, exhibition-making, and theoretical discourse most clearly converge in her practice. Among the many awards and honours she receives for expanding the disciplinary language of architecture, from becoming the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004 to the Stirling Prize in 2010 and 2011, being made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2012, and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 2016, Hadid ’s double consecration across the architectural and museum worlds is equally striking. Her projects, installations, paintings, and drawings are the subject of major retrospectives during her lifetime at institutions such as SFMOMA in San Francisco in 1998, MAK in Vienna in 2003, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2006, and the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg in 2015. Long before these honours and retrospectives, Hadid spends much of her early career earning a reputation as a paper architect, using the canvas as a laboratory in which architecture tests forms, movements, and worlds it does not yet know how to construct. For the first time since the Serpentine’s posthumous exhibition Zaha Hadid: Early Paintings and Drawings in 2016, this landmark LUMA Arles exhibition brings together her early calligraphic paintings and notebooks – exercises in Suprematist geometry that inform her built projects, from her first completed building, the Vitra Fire Station in Weil am Rhein (1988–1993) to the CMA CGM Tower (2004–2011) in Marseille and Pierresvives (2002–2012) in Montpellier. Presented in The Tower in the Parc des Ateliers, designed by the late Frank Gehry , a close friend of Hadid ’s, the show spans three interconnected chapters of her career as an architect: from Constructivism to her early projects and reception in the French context, to her longstanding relationship with Obrist . Through paintings, drawings, archival material, hours of previously unseen video interviews from 2001 to 2013, and posters realised by her peers and admirers, the exhibition reveals the full scale of a practice that moved with equal intensity between architecture, art, publication, and discourse, presenting Hadid not just as a builder of monuments, but as a restless philosopher of space. From the postcards of his childhood to the artists’ editions of the World Soup [ The Kitchen Show ] catalogue, and the artists’ postcards of Hotel Carlton Palace: Chambre 763 in 1993, to the projects do it (1993–), Take Me (I’m Yours) (1995–), to the artists’ posters of Utopia Station in 2003 and the artists’ posters of the IT’S URGENT project, conceived with Maja Hoffmann and produced by LUMA between 2019 and 2020, Hans Ulrich Obrist has consistently sought to invite artists to express themselves through media dedicated to sharing. Following the previous tributes from artists and thinkers to Édouard Glissant , Agnès Varda , Gustav Metzger and Maria Lassnig included in the exhibitions of Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives at LUMA Arles since 2021 and LUMA Westbau since 2023, the sixth chapter dedicated to Hadid presents homages from contemporary artists and architects. Acknowledgements Hans Ulrich Obrist and Arthur Fouray wish to thank Maja Hoffmann for her vision and passion for archives; and extend their gratitude to Vassilis Oikonomopoulos , Mustapha Bouhayati , Matthieu Humery , Christophe Danzin , Anna von Brühl , Friedrich von Brühl and the LUMA Dream Team. First and foremost, a heartfelt thank you goes to the Zaha Hadid Foundation ; its Board of Trustees: Rana Hadid , Tala Hadid and Hanif Mohamed Kara OBE ; to Aric Chen and the entire Zaha Hadid Foundation team, Helen Merrett , Jihane Dyer , Lydia Powell , Serena Lawrance , Phil Sofer , Olga Tenisheva , Ajeng Hendriati , Jen Hicks , Catherine Howe , Francesco Fiammenghi and Charlotte Allan . We also extend our gratitude to the artists who created posters for the exhibition: Iwan Baan , Shumon Basar and Madelon Vriesendorp , Hélène Binet , Stefano Boeri , Peter Cook , Michael Craig-Martin , Simone Fattal , Lina Ghotmeh , Susan Hefuna , Koo Jeong A , Mehdi Moutashar , Hashim Sarkis , Rirkrit Tiravanija , Sumayya Vally and Francesco Vezzoli . Our special thanks go to Luz Gyalui and the LUMA Arles production team, especially Giulia Facchini , Laura Majan , Camille Lim Koun , Jihye Kim , Laure Breton , François Mallinjod , Milo Penel and Éric Pourcel ; to Lucas Jacques-Witz ; to Amélie Busi and the LUMA Arles communication team, including Christine Denamur and Maria Luisa Rojano , for the realisation of the exhibition poster and the signage; to Luana Terrasse for coordination; to Aude Ramanana-Rahary for the printing supervision; and to Eva Moudar for the press relations; finally to Guillaume Ducongé and the visitor services teams, the reception with Ornella Bagarelli , Vincent Barthelemy , Mathilde Carayon , Audrey Godart , Zaccharie Martin and Maria Russo ; the ticketing with Asmae Boujaada and Chloé Genre-Grandpierre ; and the mediation with Louise Rolland , Dominique Nicolazo de Barmon , Louna Goupil , Clara Yatim , Taïna Diaz and Tsoliné Sukiasyan . Many thanks also to Max Shackleton , Producer, and Lorraine Two Testro , Head of Operations and Planning for Hans Ulrich Obrist ; to the Serpentine Galleries team, and in particular to Jamie Kodera and Rhiannon Stanford ; to the HENI team, the DLD team, to Pendragon Frames for framing; to Constantine Limited and André Chenue for the transport; to Sintagma, and in particular Ana Beatriz Gonçalves , Rosário Valadas Vieira , Margarida Veiga and Rita Freitas , for the subtitling of archival videos; to Jesus Plaëttner for the mastering and audio restoration of archival videos; to Thibault Verdon and the iDzia team for the audiovisual setup; to Gilles Pennegaggi , Jérôme Greboval and all the exhibition installation teams and particularly to Quentin Carrierre and Lexane Laplace ; to Florence Cuschieri and Laurie Dall’Ava for the condition reports; to Séries for the painting, to Amplitude Graphique for the wallpaper installation; to Acoplast for the signage and label elements; and, finally, to all those who have participated in the development of the exhibition, including Claire Charrier , Barbara Blanc , Julie Boukobza , Guillaume Ducongé , Louna Goupil , Elif Külozü , Florence Le Mouel , Sarah Lustman , Caroline Monti , Dominique Nicolazo de Barmon , Roxane Perineau , Louise Poisson , Louise Rolland and Clara Yatim . Index ## Related pages - [Index](https://arthurfouray.systems/exhibition-making-index) ## Structured data ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://arthurfouray.systems/exhibition-making-luma-arles-hans-ulrich-obrist-archives-chapter-6-zaha-hadid#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Arthur Fouray Systems", "item": "https://arthurfouray.systems/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Exhibition Making", "item": "https://arthurfouray.systems/exhibition-making" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Exhibition Making LUMA Arles Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives Chapter 6 Zaha Hadid", "item": "https://arthurfouray.systems/exhibition-making-luma-arles-hans-ulrich-obrist-archives-chapter-6-zaha-hadid" } ] }, { "@type": "ExhibitionEvent", "@id": "https://arthurfouray.systems/exhibition-making-luma-arles-hans-ulrich-obrist-archives-chapter-6-zaha-hadid#webpage", "url": "https://arthurfouray.systems/exhibition-making-luma-arles-hans-ulrich-obrist-archives-chapter-6-zaha-hadid", "name": "Exhibition Making LUMA Arles Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives Chapter 6 Zaha Hadid", "description": "Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives Chapter 6: Zaha Hadid, I Think There Should Be No End to Experimentation, LUMA Arles, 01.05.2026—31.03.2027.", "inLanguage": "en", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://arthurfouray.systems/#website" }, "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://arthurfouray.systems/exhibition-making-luma-arles-hans-ulrich-obrist-archives-chapter-6-zaha-hadid#breadcrumb" }, "startDate": "2026-05-01", "endDate": "2027-03-31", "location": { "@type": "Place", "name": "LUMA Arles", "address": "Arles, France" }, "contributor": { "@id": "https://arthurfouray.systems/#arthur-fouray" } } ] } ```