Huma Bhabha frequently begins her lectures by reciting Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias (1818). This sonnet recounts the tale of a traveler stumbling upon shattered, sunken ruins – a monument to a former king, left to decay in a barren landscape. Shelley’s verses find uncanny resonance within Bhabha’s extensive body of sculptures, photographs, and collages. Although her art is predominantly rooted in form and materiality, her first monographic exhibition at a French institution – which opens at Montpellier’s MO.CO. on November 18 – underscores themes of war, fallen civilizations, and the humility necessary to overcome tragic events, subjects that are as much about the past as they are about the present. What Shelley’s poem succinctly represents, and what MO.CO.’s selection offers, is a chance to observe Bhabha’s dedication to bear witness to the continuance of human struggle, ossified in figures bordering on human and animal.