major exhibition of rare paintings and archives honors zaha hadid ten years after her passing

A major exhibition at LUMA Arles presents Zaha Hadid’s creative process through early physical works rather than later digital methods. The show, titled “I Think There Should Be No End to Experimentation,” is part of the Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives and honors Hadid on the tenth anniversary of her passing. It is installed in the Tower designed by Frank Gehry and unfolds in two parts. One gallery presents archival materials, including previously unseen video interviews from 2001 to 2013 and homage posters by peers and admirers. The other gallery displays rarely exhibited paintings, early calligraphic drawings, and personal notebooks. The exhibition frames Hadid’s career through constructivist origins, early unrealized projects, and her collaboration with Hans Ulrich Obrist.

"“I don't use the computer. I do sketches, very quickly, often more than 100 on the same formal research,” Dame Zaha Hadid once told designboom, highlighting the physical drafting process behind her complex architectural designs. Today, a major show at LUMA Arles sheds light on the visionary Iraqi-British architect's creative process, looking past the digital tools of her later career to focus instead on her early calligraphic drawings, quick sketches, and the paintings she used to test new spatial ideas long before a computer could generate them."

"I Think There Should Be No End to Experimentation marks the sixth chapter in the Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives, a series of annual, archive-based exhibitions at LUMA dedicated to influential cultural figures. This landmark show, curated by Obrist and Arthur Fouray, honors the late architect, Pritzker Prize winner and experimental thinker on the tenth anniversary of her passing. Presented in the Tower, a building designed by her close friend, the late Frank Gehry, the exhibition unfolds in two distinct parts."

"In the Cherry Tree Gallery, it invites visitors to explore an extensive collection of archival material, previously unseen video interviews recorded between 2001 and 2013, and homage posters created by peers and admirers like Sir Peter Cook, Stefano Boeri, Sumayya Vally, Iwan Baan, and Lina Ghotmeh. The narrative continues in the Archives Gallery, which offers a physical encounter with her own hand through rarely exhibited paintings, early calligraphic drawings and personal notebooks."

"Conceptually, the show explores three intersecting chapters of Hadid's career: her Constructivist origins, her early unrealized projects and their reception in France, and her longstanding relationship with Obrist, with whom she collaborated extensively at the Serpentine Galleries. 'My collaboration with Zaha began in the late 1990s with the Cities on the Move exhibition, co-curated with"

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