Spanish artist Teresa Solar Abboud’s first bronze work, Mother Tongue, will transform the Hayward Gallery’s brutalist forecourt with a surreal monument to language, identity and motherhood.
On 16 October, the Hayward Gallery will unveil Mother Tongue, a monumental new commission by the Spanish artist Teresa Solar Abboud. Supported by Byredo and the Hayward Gallery’s Commissioning Committee, the work marks the artist’s first outdoor sculpture to be presented by a UK public art gallery.
The piece — a bubblegum pink bronze sculpture depicting two tongues entwined in the form of a dancing figure — will stand on the walkway outside the gallery entrance. Against the backdrop of the South Bank’s concrete architecture, it promises to lend the site a surreal new presence this autumn.
Photo by Pablo Alzaga.
Courtesy of the artist and Travesía Cuatro (Madrid_Guadalajara_Ciudad de México)
Solar Abboud is known for large-scale, vividly coloured installations that merge mythology, anatomy, natural history and ecology to examine the intersection between human technology and the natural world. Returning to the Hayward after her contribution to the group exhibition When Forms Come Alive (2024), she is working in bronze for the first time on what she has described as a deeply personal commission.
Courtesy of the artist and Travesía Cuatro
(Madrid_Guadalajara_Ciudad de México) and Lehmann Maupin (New York, Seoul, and London)
The artist’s multicultural upbringing, with an Egyptian mother and Spanish father, has informed the work. Mother Tongue reflects the negotiations of translation and assimilation within her family home, expanding outward into questions of cultural identity and the intricacies of communication across boundaries.
Solar Abboud said she was “thrilled” to return to the Hayward for a project that marks a new stage in her practice. She described the sculpture as an image of tongues imagined as “knots and crossroads,” bound together in a playful dance.
The artist has also drawn upon her experience of motherhood. The work, she explained, explores the strangeness of becoming a “foreigner” within one’s own body while challenging traditional images of the maternal figure. Rising upward while offering space for shelter beneath, the sculpture invites both grounding and transcendence.
Photo by Pablo Alzaga. Courtesy of the artist and Travesía Cuatro (Madrid_Guadalajara_Ciudad de México)
Mother Tongue will join a series of site-wide commissions across the Southbank Centre, which currently features works by Jeppe Hein, Klaus Weber, Bharti Kher, Nicola Tyson and Charlie Billingham.
Rachel Thomas, the Hayward’s chief curator, said the work would transform the gallery’s brutalist forecourt into “a site of radical encounter and wonder.” She added that its playful presence was likely to become a landmark for commuters, tourists and gallery visitors alike.
The commission has been made possible with support from the Hayward Gallery Commissioning Committee, Travesía Cuatro and Byredo.
©2025 Teresa Solar Abboud, Hayward Gallery
Contributing writer chronicling contemporary art’s beautiful mess — when he can get there. Survives on openings, opinions, one gallery, one artwork at a time. Considers espresso a meal.
