Press room

The Barbican’s spring/summer 2026 programme sees the opening of three major exhibitions tackling subjects pertinent to our times. In the Art Gallery, a retrospective of the work of Beatriz González charts the Colombian artist’s prolific practice across six decades, delving into her explorations of the politics of everyday images; followed by Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, which surveys over a century of visual culture shaped by anti-colonial resistance and transnational solidarities throughout Africa and its global diasporas. The Curve will be host to multidisciplinary artist Julia Phillips whose newly commissioned works mine the human body’s biological, psychological and social dimensions. These newly announced exhibitions join the final instalment of our Encounters: Giacometti series which sees never-before-shown sculptures by contemporary artist Lynda Benglis paired with historic works by Alberto Giacometti.  

Shanay Jhaveri, Head of Visual Arts at the Barbican, said: “The Barbican’s Visual Arts Spring 2026 programme will present globally resonant exhibitions across our various art spaces that carry forward our commitment to platforming practices that are bold and urgent. From Beatriz González’s exploration of power through everyday imagery, to Julia Phillips’s poetic meditations on the body and self, and the expansive vision of Project a Black Planet, these exhibitions engage with themes of memory, identity, resistance and belonging – concerns that continue to shape our world today.” 

Please see full details of newly announced exhibitions below. 

Beatriz González
Barbican Art Gallery 
25 February – 10 May 2026 
Press Preview: Monday 23 February 2026, 10am – 1pm 

“Art says things that history cannot”. – Beatriz González  

In February 2026, the Barbican presents the first UK retrospective of groundbreaking artist Beatriz González (b. 1932, Bucaramanga, Colombia). Bringing together over 150 artworks, many of which have never been shown in the UK, this major exhibition explores the artist’s influential practice from the 1960s to the present. Known for her distinctive graphic style and bold palette, González’s work explores the power and impact of the images we encounter every day, probing their potential to communicate and determine how we perceive the world. Drawing from found images that she has amassed throughout her life in Colombia – ranging from tattered reproductions of revered paintings from Western art history to newspaper clippings reporting on violent murder, conflict and loss – González transforms her sources through her work. Playfully addressing the dominating influence of Western iconography, questioning socially constructed ideas of taste, confronting complex histories of violence, and paying homage to displaced communities, she reveals how images reflect power dynamics on a personal and political scale.  

Challenging conventional hierarchies of value imposed on specific mediums or cultures, González experiments with myriad media, including painting, prints, furniture-objects (beds, tables and TVs), monumental painted backdrops, and large-scale installations occupying public spaces. Rooted in and responding to a specific Colombian context, her work addresses pressing concerns ranging from political violence to the climate crisis and the lives of Indigenous communities while remaining deeply resonant to contemporary global politics and speaking to universal human concerns. 

The exhibition will be thoughtfully designed by architecture studio Unknown Works. Accompanying the show will be a book co-published with Prestel and designed by Roland Brauchli, with contributions from Diego Chocano, Estrella de Diego, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Julieta González, Natalia Gutiérrez, Lotte Johnson, Miguel A. López, Amalia Pica, José Alejandro Restrepo and José Antonio Suárez Londoño.  

This exhibition is generously supported by Lonti Ebers (Lead Support) and Estrellita and Daniel Brodsky as part of the Beatriz Gonzalez Exhibition Circle.  

This exhibition is co-produced by Pinacoteca de São Paulo (30 August 2025 –1 February 2026), Barbican, London (25 February – 10 May 2026), and Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (12 June –11 October 2026). 


Julia Phillips 
The Curve 
30 January - 19 April 2026 
Press Preview: Thursday 29 January 2026, 10am – 1pm 

In January 2026, the Barbican will stage the first UK institutional solo exhibition of the multidisciplinary artist Julia Phillips with newly commissioned works for The Curve. Through her varied practice, which draws on psychoanalytic and Black feminist theories of embodiment, Phillips translates intangible concepts – ranging from psychological states and biological processes to the notion of a soul and spirit – into material form.  

The exhibition will feature new sculptures and drawings which take the human body as a starting point. In her sculptures, Phillips combines glazed ceramic fragments, pressed and moulded against her own body, with fabricated metal structures to produce compelling objects that, while often surreal or machine-like, elicit a visceral response. Animating the unique architecture of The Curve, Phillips’s installation will encourage audiences to reflect on what is unseen but deeply felt – the internal and external forces that shape our experience and govern our world.  

Julia Phillips (b. 1985, Hamburg) is a German and American multidisciplinary artist, who lives and works in Chicago. She has had solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1 in New York (2018) and the Kunstverein Braunschweig in Germany (2019), and produced her first public artwork commission, Observer, Observed, for The High Line in New York in 2022. Phillips has also been a highlight of major group exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better than the Real Thing (2024) and the 59th Venice Biennale exhibition, The Milk of Dreams (2022). Her work has been acquired internationally by institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm. The first monograph devoted to her work, Energy Exchange, was published by Mousse Publishing in 2023. 

Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica 
Barbican Art Gallery 
11 June – 6 September 2026 

In Summer 2026, the Barbican presents Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, a major international exhibition examining the influence of Pan-Africanism on artistic and cultural production. 

While Pan-Africanism has long been recognised as a galvanising force in twentieth-century global history, Project a Black Planet is the first exhibition to consider both its impact on visual art and culture, and the critical role of artists in shaping Pan-African visions. Spanning over a century to the present day, the exhibition brings together over 300 works – ranging from paintings and installations to posters, journals, and film – produced across Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, North America and Western Europe. 

Coined around 1900, Pan-Africanism can be understood as an umbrella term for political and philosophical movements advocating for self-determination, anti-colonial resistance, and transnational solidarity among peoples of African descent. Panafrica, the symbolic site invoked in the title, is presented not as a fixed territory but as a conceptual terrain where rupture, dissent, and collective imagination converge in the pursuit of emancipatory futures. Rather than mapping a defined geography, the exhibition envisions Panafrica as a boundless constellation that challenges and transforms standard representations of the planet. 

Participating artists include: Kader Attia; Marlene Dumas; Inji Efflatoun; Sonia Gomes; David Hammons; Nicholas Hlobo; Wifredo Lam; Simone Leigh; Ernest Mancoba; Kerry James Marshall; Kawira Mwirichia; Abdias Nascimento; Grace Ndiritu; Magdalene Odundo; Chris Ofili; Colette Omogbai; Ingrid Pollard; Samir Rafi; Cauleen Smith; Tavares Strachan. 

This exhibition is co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona in collaboration with Barbican London, and KANAL-Centre Pompidou Bruxelles.  

Barbican Visual Arts programme 2025-26:   

Encounters: Giacometti x Huma Bhabha
Level 2 
Until 10 August 2025  

Encounters: Giacometti x Mona Hatoum 
Level 2 
3 September 2025 – 11 January 2026 

Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion 
Barbican Art Gallery  
25 September 2025 – 25 January 2026 

Lucy Raven  
The Curve 
9 October 2025 – 4 January 2026 

Encounters: Giacometti x Lynda Benglis  
Level 2   
12 February – 31 May 2026 

Julia Phillips   
The Curve 
30 January - 19 April 2026 

Beatriz González 
Barbican Art Gallery 
25 February – 10 May 2026 

Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica 
Barbican Art Gallery 
11 June – 6 September 2026