Experimental cross-arts company Fevered Sleep will make its Barbican debut with public art intervention This Grief Thing. Entering a uniquely themed pop-up shop, visitors in the foyers will discover a space to connect, share loss and find hope while normalising conversations around grief. This event is part of Scene Change, a series of transformative performances and gatherings in unexpected places programmed by the Barbican. Runs Sun 15—Sat 21 Feb 2026 – for more info, please visit here.
How has the project evolved since 2018 in response to hundreds of meaningful encounters in different cities, and what can visitors in London expect from their experience?
Even before the project officially opened, its shape was formed by the many conversations we had with hundreds of participants who either gathered with us to talk about their experiences of grief and grieving, or encountered us in everyday spaces – market stalls, buses, the underground – and responded to the simple invitation to talk about grief. I’d say the project hasn’t changed as such, it retains its original form. We as the artist/shop keepers, however, can’t fail to evolve through the very personal interactions we have with each person who steps over the threshold.
This Grief Thing replaces performance with presence and conversation through gatherings and a pop-up shop. What did stepping into the role of shopkeepers reveal about how people want to encounter art around grief?
We started this project with the question, how can we encourage people to talk about, and normalise conversations around grief? Creating a dance piece or an installation, of course makes grief more visible to those happy or used to more formal spaces dedicated to art. A shop, on the other hand, is a space most people are comfortable to enter; a shopkeeper, and a ‘transaction’ in a shared public space is an everyday occurrence. We’re intentionally demystifying the notion of the artist, who is very often invisible or at a distance to audiences or spectators and placing ourselves right in the midst of it. Most visitors don’t know that we’re the artists, and we’re pretty certain that a visitor in a shopping centre in Middlesbrough for instance, really doesn’t care!
Grief can often be private or even stigmatsied in Western culture. What responsibility do artists and institutions have in creating shared rituals and spaces for something so universal?
Western culture has done a pretty poor job at helping people to process and understand death and grief. Churches and other religious spaces are the main gatekeepers of grief, and for those who don’t relate to those kinds of practices, once a funeral is over, they are often cast adrift. As a company making lots of work with and for children, we feel strongly that including death and grief in educational settings would go a long way to tackling this stigma. Artists will of course always make work around such a significant subject, but if we as a society can’t even talk to our children about it, how can we expect artists to even scratch the surface?
How do you hold ethical boundaries when working with such intimate and often raw experiences, while still keeping the space open and porous to the public?
This question comes up often, and I think it partly relates to the previous question. The stigma around grief, talking about death, revealing deep personal emotions holds lots of fear for us as a society. There’s a concern that giving permission for open conversation might lead to participants experiencing feelings that are somehow unmanageable, that harm may be caused to them or us or others. So, whilst pushing back at the question, we of course acknowledge our duty of care; we have distress protocols in place, and we have at hand organisations we can signpost people to if we feel they need further support. We’re also clear that in conversations, we can choose to talk from our very personal experiences of grief, or more in the abstract.
This year marks Fevered Sleep’s 30th anniversary. Looking back, what feels most essential about the way your broader practice has evolved, and how does This Grief Thing sit within that journey? Has listening to strangers talk about loss reshaped your understanding of care as an artist?
30 years of running a company has given us the confidence to say we feel happiest sitting in uncertainty! Some time ago we began to invite participants and collaborators in at the very inception of an idea, at that moment we’re stumbling around without an endpoint, at our most vulnerable. Our work is heavily reliant on the generosity of strangers willing to talk and think with us. This Grief Thing is a product of all the people who came to tell us how grief revealed itself to them, of their vulnerability over cups of tea, sat on chairs in circles, not asking our endpoint. Years back we placed care at the forefront of our practice, and we continue to be guided by the people who we encounter across our work.