by Artist Anish Kapoor is considering taking legal action after border guards posed for a photo in front of his Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago, saying the scene depicted “fascist America.”
The Indian-born artist said he received the painting on Tuesday morning from a friend who lives in the US city as part of a conversation about his exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in the Southbank Centre, which opens next year.
“Kidnapping street vendors, breaking down doors, ripping people out of cars, using tear gas on residential streets,” he said of the agents who were reportedly partying after “military-style” immigration raids. “I mean, this is fascist America and it’s just unbelievable.”
More than 1,000 people have reportedly been arrested by federal agents since the crackdown began in September. Asked if he was considering legal options, Kapoor said: “Of course I will do everything I can.”
Kapoor took legal action against the National Rifle Association (NRA) after it used an image of Cloud Gate, installed in 2006 and known locally as “The Bean,” in an advertisement.
He reached an out-of-court settlement with the NRA in 2018. “This is a little more complicated,” Kapoor said of the more recent incident, “because it involves a full, if you will, national army unit.”.”
Kapoor recently opened an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York that focused on his early works (his mother was an Iraqi Jew). The Southbank exhibition, which will take up the entire Hayward Gallery and feature around 40 works, is a completely different beast.
Opening on June 16, 2026 and running until October 18, visitors will be treated to Kapoor’s usual mix of large-scale, colossal works using vibrant pigments and Vantablack, the most intense black paint available. At the Hayward he will unveil two new pieces: The first is an inflated PVC membrane.
“When you walk into the exhibition, you see a very large object that takes up the entire first gallery,” he said. “It arches, if you will, and fills the entire space, pushing the viewer completely to the side.”
The second is described by the Southbank Center as “a dark mountain swell” rising “amid a vast red landscape” in the upper gallery.
He said: “I hope that it evokes in the viewer a sense of: ‘What is this?’; ‘Is it art?’; ‘Why am I here with this?'” I think these are very important questions because they trigger emotions.”
The exhibition will also feature Kapoor’s 2022 work “Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto,” a giant swirl of black and red descending from the ceiling. There are some works from the 1990s and 2010s, but much of the exhibition comes from his work over the last five years.
“I don’t think Hayward is a place for retrospectives,” he said. “It’s a place that invites bold proposals, and I’m jumping in with both feet.”
The exhibition, curated by outgoing Hayward artistic director Ralph Rugoff, is a full-circle moment for Kapoor, who had his first major exhibition at a public gallery at the Southbank Center in 1998.
Kapoor, who was born in Mumbai and won the Turner Prize in 1991, will be one of the standouts at the Southbank Center’s 75th anniversary celebrations.
In September, the Southbank Center announced that Danny Boyle’s You Are Here would see thousands of attendees take over the site to celebrate the role the institution “has played in supporting youth culture since its inception”.
Related: Venice in Vantablack: Anish Kapoor’s Disappearance
Celebrations begin in May to mark the 75th anniversary of the Festival of Britain. Those responsible for the institution hope that it will “electrify” the country in the same way as the original celebrations in 1951 did.
Kapoor said: “75 years is a long time in which a hell of a lot has changed. Of course the post-war optimism is gone, but perhaps we can inspire a new optimism. A Britain made up of all sorts of people from all sorts of places, coming together with this strange positive sense of what it means to speak of ourselves as British.”
The anniversary will also include a tribute to Benjamin Zephaniah and composer Steve Reich, while Goalhanger Podcasts will host events and pianist Yuja Wang will present her immersive “Playing with Fire” performance.
