Arch Hades: Return | Ritorno

Featuring site-specific painting, immersive sculpture and an installation soundscape, Return | Ritorno draws us into Hades’ ethereal interior worlds that oscillate between vulnerability and restraint as part of a wider exploration of the human condition. Drawing on Classical, Surrealist and Romantic traditions, Return | Ritorno expands on Hades’ acclaimed London solo show in 2025, where she first experimented with combining spoken word and visual art to create absorbing, synesthetic experiences. The centrepiece, which lends the exhibition its title, Return (2025), is a monumental 22-panel painting spanning 13 metres. Comprising sixty-three life-size figures, the work pays homage to the power and precision of Greco-Roman sculpture. Installed across three walls on the building’s top floor, the painting echoes the structure of an altar triptych and draws inspiration from Gustav Klimt’s Faculty Paintings – Medicine, Philosophy and Jurisprudence (1900–1907). Additional sections explore Sphinx (2026), the immersive sculptural installation rendered in mirrored chrome, simultaneously evoking ancient Egyptian ruins and otherworldly futures, and the ongoing Confessions series, drawing on decades of journaling that began in early childhood. Here, the artist extracts lines from discarded pages of handwritten diaries and enlarges them onto slabs resembling materials such as concrete and marble.