Mona Hatoum

Mona Hatoum (; born 1952) is a British-Palestinian multimedia and installation artist who lives in London.

Biography

Mona Hatoum was born in 1952 in Beirut, Lebanon, to Palestinian parents from Haifa. Although born in Lebanon, Hatoum was ineligible for a Lebanese identity card and does not identify as Lebanese. As she grew up, her family did not support her desire to pursue art.

Hatoum studied graphic design at Beirut University College in Lebanon for two years and then began working at an advertising agency. Hatoum was displeased with the advertising work she produced. Her work can be interpreted as a description of the body, as a commentary on politics, and on gender and difference as she explores the dangers and confines of the domestic world. Her work can also be interpreted through the concept of space as her sculpture and installation work depend on the viewer to inhabit the surrounding space to complete the effect. There are always multiple readings to her work.

One such example was in her 1985 work, Roadworks, in which Hatoum walked barefoot through the streets of Brixton, with black boots tied behind her ankles, a statement on the surveillance and policing of the predominantly-Afro-Caribbean population after the 1981 Brixton riot/uprising and the 1985 Brixton riot/uprising. About this work, she writes: ‘I found myself in this rare situation of creating work which although personal/autobiographical, had an immediate relevance to the community of people it was addressing. I also found that I was working ‘for’ the people in the streets of Brixton rather than ‘against’ the indifferent, often hostile audience I usually encounter.’ Roadworks was curated as part of the 2023 Women in Revolt Exhibition at Tate Modern.

Measures of Distance

thumb|Hot Spot (2006) by Hatoum|alt=To the right of a red wall, a steel sphere glows along the edges of the Earth's continents.Created in 1988 as a result of a residency at Western Front in Vancouver, Measures of Distance illustrates Hatoum's early themes of family, displacement, and female sexuality. The video piece itself is fifteen minutes long and consists of intimate, colored photographs of Hatoum's mother showering. Hatoum overlays the photographs with letters that her mother, living in Beirut during the civil war, wrote to Hatoum, living in London. Handwritten in Arabic, the letters make up the video's narration and themes, and speak to the difficulty of sending letters in a time of conflict. Hatoum reads the letters aloud in Arabic and English. The video roots itself in the brief family reunion that occurred in Beirut between Hatoum and her parents in 1981. While primarily about the mother–daughter relationship, in her mother's letters Hatoum's father is mentioned and thus the father–daughter relationship as well as the husband–wife relationship is examined in this video.

The elements of the video—the letters, Hatoum's mother's wish to see her, and mentions of the war by Hatoum's mother—explore how the war in Palestine and the war in Lebanon displaced the identity and the relationships of Hatoum and her family. The video is neither a documentary nor meant to be journalistic. The video critiques stereotypes and remains optimistic, since the narration from the letters is largely positive, except about the distance between the mother and the daughter.

In this portrait of a Palestinian woman, Hatoum gives her mother a voice while subverting stereotypes about Arab women. The Tate Modern describes the portrait in the following words: "It is through the daughter's art-making project that the mother is able to present herself freely, in a form which cements a bond of identity independent of colonial and patriarchal concerns."

Measures of Distance was screened at the London Film Festival, AFI National Video Festival, and the Montreal Women's Film and Video Festival.

Hot Spot III

Hot Spot III, created in 2009, is a large installation piece of the globe tilted like the Earth and about as tall as a person. The title connects to the theme of political unrest, imagining conflict in one geographical area upsetting the whole world. The globe is made of cage-like steel that glows luminescent red, as though the world is ablaze, flickering quickly, meant to create an energetic environment that mesmerizes the audience. The installation also invokes a feeling of danger with the hot red lighting outlining the continents. Hatoum challenges whether minimalist or surrealist forms can adequately address the world's issues. From then on, she relied on the kind of interactivity that lets the spectator become involved in the aesthetic experience without making the artist as performer the focus of attention.

A notable piece exemplifying her turn from performance to physical objects is Keffieh (1993–1999), a scarf woven of human hair that juxtaposes ideas of femininity and religion.

At the end of the 1980s, she began to focus on common domestic objects—including kitchen utensils and house furnishings. T42 (1993–98) is a pair of teacups fused together at the rim.

The body

Many of Hatoum's early pieces situate the body as the locus of a network of concerns—political, feminist, and linguistic—thereby eliciting a highly visceral response. One of her pieces, a 1994 video installation called Corps etranger, showed color video images of an endoscopic probe of her body. Corps etranger was originally produced for Centre Georges Pompidou and features a partially enclosed, cylindrical structure that viewers are called to enter. The viewer stands on a circular plate of glass, and video close-up images of internal and external parts of the artist's body. The artist hails the viewer to "walk around" the inside of her body through the visual sequence taken on the endoscope and colonoscope, scanning and probing her digestive system. The audio is a recording of a heartbeat and bodily movements.

The artwork of Hatoum investigates the concept of the 'abjection' introduced by the cultural theorist, Julia Kristeva and the uncanny in her works using body hair.

Politics

The political possibilities for the uncanny visual motif are relevant to discussions of Hatoum's work, as the disruption achieved at a psychological level can have broad implications involving power, politics, or individual concerns.

Exhibitions

Hatoum's work was featured in a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston in 2015. In May 2016, Tate Modern held a "comprehensive exploration into 35 years of Hatoum's work in Britain, from her early performance and video works to her sculpture and large-scale installation" The Menil Collection in Houston, Texas organized a solo exhibition titled "Mona Hatoum: Terra Infirma" that was on view from 12 October 2017 to 25 February 2018. This exhibition then traveled to the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and was on view from 6 April to 11 August 2018.

In March 2018, Hatoum was shortlisted for the Hepworth Prize for Sculpture, alongside Michael Dean, Phillip Lai, Magali Reus and Cerith Wyn Evans. In January 2020, Hatoum was part of Artpace's exhibit titled Visibilities: Intrepid Women of Artpace. Also in 2020, she received the Julio González award, featuring in a solo exhibition at Institut Valencià d'Art Modern in 2021.

Mona Hatoum at White Cube Seoul (2025)

In 2025, Hatoum held her first solo exhibition in South Korea at White Cube Seoul. The survey spanned 25 years of her career, showcasing over 20 sculptures and works on paper. The exhibition focused on themes of containment, the "abject" body, and the subversion of domestic or medical objects.

Major Works and Themes

The exhibition debuted several new works that utilized Hatoum’s signature motifs of grids and barriers:

Awards

2008 – Rolf Schock Prize in Visual Arts
2011 – Joan Miró Prize, Fundació Joan Miró
2017 – 10th Hiroshima Art Prize, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima
2018 – Whitechapel Gallery Art Icon
2019 – Praemium Imperiale for the sculpture category, in recognition of her lifetime achievement in the medium
2021 – Julio González Price 2020

References

External links

Mona Hatoum at Whitecube.com
Mona Hatoum at daratalfunun.org
Mona Hatoum at for-site.org
Mona Hatoum Artist CV at Whitecube.com