We Come in Peace

The sculptures were made of clay, styrofoam, and cork, then cast in bronze to allow them to withstand the elements.[4][5] The title of the installation makes reference to a 1951 film, The Day the Earth Stood Still.[6] According to AM New York, Bhabha viewed the characters as cooperative, with We Come in Peace coming to aid Benaam, but arriving too late because Benaam has already died – though to her mind the latter might still "rise up ... [t]hings that you would not imagine might happen. That's the hope."[3]

While Bhabha considers the work to be "very much an anti-war statement", she also wanted it to be multi-layered and open to a wide variety of interpretations.[3]

Scott Lynch of Gothamist, remarking on the pieces' diversity of inspiration, observed, "Both pieces allude to a wide swath of art history, from ancient African and Indian sculpture to contemporary works by the likes of Basquiat and David Hammons".[6] He said that the sculptures created an "ominous but open-ended narrative, inviting visitors to explore their own thematic interpretations: subjugation and supplication, respect, fear, and/or adoration; social upheaval and displacement; gender, power, and 'memories of place.'"[6]

Martha Schwendener of The New York Times described the installation as "a spare and unsettling sculptural installation", that "ripples" with associations of "colonization, invasion, imperialism".[5] She suggests that the work invites the observer to consider the sheer strangeness of extraterrestrial or "post-humanity" lifeforms as they would likely be experienced by humankind, but that such encounters may ultimately offer the possibility of a "melding of cultures and aesthetics that might be harmonious rather than imperialist."[5]

Describing the work as "eerie, other, unnerving, ambiguous, even alarming",[7] Jerry Saltz for Vulture saw the work as a critique of the West: its "vivisected, gouged idol covered in blotchy graffiti could be from any photograph seen daily of the mayhem in the Middle East, just part of the carnage, interventions, and wars [Bhabha] has called a 'systematic demonization and humiliation of the people and their ancient and present Islamic cultures' ... [h]er Met installation is a vivid rebuke of what the West says to all the cultures it invades: We come in peace."[7] He assessed the work as "among the best Met roof sculpture installations since the program began in 1987."[7]

• Jhaveri, Shanay; Halter, Ed; Wagstaff, Sheena (2018). The Roof Garden Commission: Huma Bhabha, We Come in Peace. Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 978-1-58839-646-4. Retrieved July 27, 2019. (Exhibition catalogue)