The Rebar Beneath by LionHeart

Developed through an engagement with Zaha Hadid’s archive and the radical formal experimentation of her early work, the project brings together film, poetry, performance and spatial installation. LionHeart translates architecture’s underlying principles, theories, and tensions into an embodied visual and poetic language.

Taking its title from the reinforcement concealed within concrete, The Rebar Beneath considers what exists beneath the forms that first attract us. In a culture increasingly shaped by immediacy and visual gratification, the work questions our readiness to accept the visible as sufficient.

The exhibition does not prescribe a transformation nor offer a singular interpretation. Instead, it proposes an encounter with metaphor and abstraction as a means of enquiry: an invitation to venture beyond familiar appearances and towards the complexity of what forms might conceal, suggest or make possible.

About the Artist

LionHeart (Rhael Cape, b. 1987) is a multidisciplinary artist and poet whose practice spans language, moving image, performance and spatial installation.

Poetry forms the foundation of his work, operating as an excavator of architecture’s emotional intelligence. His practice examines the relationship between the visible and the unseen, exploring how memory, identity, perception and cultural expectations influence the ways we understand ourselves and the world around us.

Through an unconventional approach to form and artistic discipline, LionHeart challenges familiar modes of interpretation and proposes alternative ways of seeing. His work moves between material and metaphor, priming us for a built environment where emotion is paramount. Creating digital interventions within analogue spaces, LionHeart subverts the ineffable, instilling an emotional renaissance within architecture.