LUMA Arles / Archives Hans Ulrich Obrist Chapter 6: Zaha Hadid « Je pense que l’expérimentation ne devrait pas avoir de fin »

At the Parc des Ateliers in Arles, LUMA presents the sixth chapter of the Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives, an exhibition devoted to Zaha Hadid ten years after her death. It takes its title from her words: « Je pense que l’expérimentation ne devrait pas avoir de fin ».

A dialogue with Hans Ulrich Obrist that began in the late 1990s

This chapter pays tribute to Dame Zaha Hadid (born in Baghdad, Iraq, on 31 October 1950, and died in Miami, Florida, USA, on 31 March 2016). The exhibition looks back over the long exchange between the curator and the legendary architect. It started in the late 1990s, and in 2000 Obrist asked her to create Meshworks at the Villa Médicis.

Hadid joined the board of trustees of the Serpentine as early as 1996. At the invitation of Julia Peyton-Jones, she designed its inaugural Pavilion in 2000. After Obrist was appointed at the Serpentine in 2006, the architect took part in several of its Marathons, and in 2013 she designed the Serpentine North Gallery.

Calligraphic paintings, notebooks and unseen video interviews from 2001 to 2013

For the first time since 2016, the exhibition brings together Hadid’s early calligraphic paintings and her notebooks. The notebooks hold exercises in Suprematist geometry, which fed into her built projects, from the Vitra Fire Station (1993) to the CMA CGM Tower (2011) in Marseille, by way of Pierresvives (2012) in Montpellier. Previously unseen video interviews recorded between 2001 and 2013 round out the display.

Three chapters of a career inside Frank Gehry’s La Tour

The show is housed in La Tour, designed by the late Frank Gehry, who was a close friend of Hadid. It unfolds across three chapters of her architectural career: Constructivism, then her projects and their early reception in France, and finally her long-standing relationship with Obrist. The Zaha Hadid Foundation collaborated closely on this presentation.